I 


WOBUKN  PUBLIC  LIBRARY 

FOUNDED  1856. 


^> 


, 


THE 


HEART   OF  THE    CONTINENT 


A  RECORD  OF  TRAVEL  ACROSS  THE 
PLAINS  AND  IN  OREGON, 


WITH   AN 


EXAMINATION  OF  THE  MORMON  PRINCIPLE. 


BY 

FITZ  HUGH  LUDLOW. 


WITH  ILLUSTRATIONS. 


NEW  YORK: 
PUBLISHED   BY  HURD  AND  HOUGHTON. 


1870. 


Entered  according  to  Act  of  Congress,  in  the  year  1870,  by 

IIURD    AND    HOUQHTON, 

in  the  Clerk's  Office  of  the  District  Court  for  the  Southern  District  of  New  York. 


RIVERSIDE,  CAMBRIDGE: 

STEBEOTTPED  AND  PRINTED  BY 

H.  0.  HOUGHTON  AND  COMPANY. 


TO   THE  HEADER 


IT  was  my  original  intention  to  have  published 
these  notes  of  my  journey  in  the  two-volume  form, 
comprehending  much  additional  material  which  would 
have  made  the  work  a  complete  and  minute  survey 
not  only  of  the  entire  region  traversed  by  the  Pa- 
cific Railroad,  but  of  much  of  the  incalculably  valu- 
ble  and  interesting  region  tributary  to  it  on  either 
side.  Of  the  latter  part  of  my  journey, — after  leav- 
ing Salt  Lake  City,  —  I  have  here,  however,  had  room 
to  give  only  the  more  salient  features ;  and  by  the 
same  circumstances  which  rendered  it  advisable  to 
reduce  the  book  to  a  single  volume,  I  have  been  com- 
pelled to  throw  much  of  the  matter  relating  to  the 
Mormons,  their  home,  their  problem,  and  their  destiny, 
into  what  to  most  readers  is  the  least  attractive  and 
most  superficially  noticed  form  —  an  Appendix. 

It  is  principally  on  behalf  of  this  Appendix  that  I 
utter  a  word  of  prefatory  remark.  The  engrossing 
question,  "  What  shall  we  do  with  the  Mormons  ?' ' 
is,  so  far  as  I  know  from  personal  reading  and  infor- 
mation obtained  at  the  best  hands,  treated  in  this 
Appendix  from  an  entirely  new  point  of  view.  I  may 
say  frankly  that  I  believe  my  solution  of  the  question 
the  promptest,  the  most  feasible,  the  least  productive 


IV  TO  THE  READER. 

of  violent  dislocation  and  suffering,  which  has  yet 
been  offered.  Because  I  so  believe  and  am  desirous 
to  have  the  fact  tested  by  other  minds,  and  because 
there  is  much  in  the  small  type  at  the  other  end  of 
my  book  which  is  full  as  worthy  of  the  larger  typo- 
graphical honors  as  anything  which  precedes  it, —  be- 
cause, in  fine,  I  think  the  reader  will  agree  with  me 
in  calling  the  Mormon  Matter  at  least  as  interesting 
as  the  rest  of  the  volume,  I  here  venture  to  ask  that 
it  may  be  read  at  least  no  more  superficially  than  that. 

F.  H.  L. 


CONTENTS. 


CHAPTER  I. 

PAGE 
THE   SETTING   OUT 1 

CHAPTER  IL 
COMSTOCK'S.  —  A  BUFFALO  HUNT 23 

CHAPTER  III. 

FROM  THE  BUFFALO  COUNTRY  TO  THE  GOLD  MINES  .     .     .   102 

CHAPTER  IV. 

PIKE'S    PIKE   AND    THE   GARDEN   OF    THE    GODS        ....       139 

CHAPTER  V. 

INTO    THE   ROCKY   MOUNTAINS 191 

CHAPTER  VI. 

THE    APPROACH    TO    SALT   LAKE   CITY 236 

CHAPTER  VH. 

THE   NEW  JERUSALEM 815 

CHAPTER  VIH. 

THE    DEAD     SEA.  —  THE     PHYSICAL     GEOGRAPHY   AND     HISTORY 

OF    ITS    BASIN    .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .376 

CHAPTER  IX. 

SEVEN    WEEKS    IX    THE    GREAT    YO-SEMITE      .  409 


yi  CONTENTS. 

CHAPTER  X. 

FAOB 
ON    HORSEBACK   INTO   OREGON  ...  .  445 

CHAPTER  XL 

ON   THE    COLUMBIA   RIVER 473 

APPENDIX  503 


THE  HEART  OF  THE  CONTINENT. 
CHAPTER  I. 

THE  SETTING  OUT. 

I  MIGHT  pass  over  without  a  word  the  whole  line  of 
railway  communication  between  New  York  and  Atchi- 
son,  on  the  Missouri  River,  were  it  not  that  the  uniform 
kindness  of  its  officers  to  the  party  of  which  I  was 
a  member,  and  their  interest  in  the  artistic  and  scien- 
tific purposes  of  our  expedition,  deserve  to  be  as  well 
known  by  our  acknowledgment,  as  their  roads  are 
without  our  mention. 

The  moment  that  we  stated  our  project  to  Mr.  Scott 
and  the  other  officers  of  the  Pennsylvania  Central, 
they  not  only  presented  the  entire  party  with  trans- 
portation over  their  own  road  to  Pittsburg,  but  gave 
us  letters  of  introduction  which  insured  our  being 
treated  with  similar  courtesy  on  all  the  remaining 
roads  to  St.  Louis. 

To  them,  to  the  officers  of  the  Crestline  route  be- 
tween Pittsburg  and  Cincinnati,  and  to  Messrs.  Lamed 
and  M' Alpine  of  the  Cincinnati  and  St.  Louis  road, 
we  owe  recognition,  no  less  for  the  fine  spirit  of  ap- 
preciation and  helpfulness  in  which  they  received  our 
enterprise,  than  for  the  diminution  effected  by  their 
kindness  in  the  burdens  of  a  necessarily  very  expen- 
sive journey.  There  can  scarcely  be  a  better  indica- 
i 


2  THE   HEART  OF  THE   CONTINENT. 

tion  for  the  future  of  Science,  Art,  and  Literature  in 
our  country,  than  the  cordiality  which  such  a  course 
as  that  of  these  gentlemen  shows  existing  between 
those  professions  and  Commerce.  I  might  add  that 
Commerce  herself  has  reason  to  note  this  indication 
as  gladly ;  for  Science,  Art,  and  Literature  are  daugh- 
ters of  the  same  mature  civilization  as  she,  and  to- 
gether they  flourish  or  decay. 

At  St.  Louis  we  found  a  letter  awaiting  us  from 
Colonel  William  Osborne,  formerly  of  the  Hannibal 
and  St.  Joseph's  road  and  then  President  of  the  Platte 
County  Railroad,  extending  between  St.  Joseph  and 
the  Missouri  border  opposite  Atchison.  This  letter 
introduced  us  to  Mr.  Sturgeon,  President  of  the  North- 
ern Railroad  of  Missouri,  and,  by  the  combined  cour- 
tesy of  these  gentlemen,  we  were  forwarded  freely  all 
the  way  to  the  Kansas  terminus  of  railway  communi- 
cation. I  shall  have  other  such  courtesies  to  ac- 
knowledge as  our  journey  proceeds. 

At  St.  Joseph  we  completed  our  outfit  by  the  pur- 
chase of  additional  blankets  and  ammunition;  and 
after  a  few  pleasant  days  spent  in  a  family  of  personal 
friends,  went  down  by  rail  to  the  starting-point  of  our 
Overland  Journey. 

Atchison  is  a  small  town,  but  a  lively  one.  We  had 
scarcely  touched  the  ferry-wharf  on  the  Kansas  side 
before  we  were  invited  to  a  hanging.  Lynch,  C.  J., 
was  to  sit  that  afternoon  upon  a  couple  of  bushwhack- 
ers. His  is  a  most  impartial  tribunal,  which,  to  avoid 
giving  offense,  acquits  nobody.  The  accused  were, 
first,  a  man  of  fifty-five  or  thereabouts,  a  gray  person 
who,  in  a  more  advanced  state  of  society,  might  have 
bulled  the.  gold  market  and  cheated  his  acquaintance 
under  the  aegis  of  eminent  respectability  without  the 


THE  SETTING   OUT.  3 

wagging  of  a  reprobative  tongue ;  second,  a  young 
fellow  of  imperturbable  address,  whom  Wall  Street 
would  have  esteemed  highly  in  the  position  of  con- 
fidential clerk  to  the  foregoing.  Neither  of  them  had 
any  look  of  the  popularly  conceived  criminal,  —  prob- 
ably neither  of  them  were  any  worse  than  fifty  men 
in  the  crowd  who  clamored  for  their  death.  I  heard 
one  man,  enthusiastic  upon  the  even-handed  justice 
of  the  occasion,  who,  if  he  had  the  theme  of  his  eulogy 
meted  to  himself,  would  swing  higher  than  Haman,  or 
leave  locks  of  his  gray  hair  dabbled  in  blood, upon 
every  threshold  in  Atchison,  —  a  man  with  the  effron- 
tery to  live  under  the  very  noses  of  citizens  whose 
crape  for  brothers  slaughtered  by  him  in  the  border- 
ruffian  times  was  scarce  yet  rusty  on  their  wide-awakes. 
I  speak  thus,  not  because  I  deprecate  stern  frontier 
justice,  but  because  the  hands  which  administer  it  are 
nerved,  almost  invariably,  by  brute  fury  or  caprice. 
In  a  new  country,  the  indomitable  pioneers  who  build 
the  basement  of  civilization,  have  too  much  to  do  with 
subduing  nature  to  bother  their  heads  especially  re- 
garding government.  But  government,  while  man- 
kind stays  selfish,  never  can  regulate  itself.  While 
the  workers  are  felling  trees,  breaking  roads,  and 
building  cabins,  the  knaves  and  do-nothings  get  into 
political  power.  Before  long  the  judge  sits  only  to 
intimidate  the  just  and  excuse  the  villain.  The  sher- 
iff's baton  becomes  a  finger-post  to  loop-holes  for  the 
escape  of  thieves  and  murderers.  The  jury  and  the 
malefactor  wink  at  each  other  across  a  rail.  The  gov- 
ernor stands  waiting  with  a  pardon  to  poke  a  hole 
through  the  coarse  legal  sieve  which  has  casually 
caught  an  exceptional  rascal  across  a  wire.  The  legis- 
lature pass  laws  with  cunning  quirks  in  them,  provi- 


4  THE  HEART  OF  THE   CONTINENT. 

dent  against  a  day  when  these  shall  be  convenient  for 
themselves.  When  this  occurs,  and  the  honest  men 
find  it  out,  Lynch-law  is  the  only  practical  transition 
to  a  good  form  of  government.  A  most  horrible  thing 
in  the  abstract,  it  becomes  the  sole  thing  in  the  con- 
crete. Perhaps  it  is  essential  to  it  that  it  should  in 
most  cases  be  administered  by  a  furious  mob ;  but  that 
is  the  most  horrible  part  of  its  horror  to  a  stranger. 

Nearly  two  thousand  people  were  assembled  in  a 
deep  ravine  indented  in  the  rolling  plain  back  of  the 
town,  around  a  lone  cotton-wood  tree,  under  which 
stood  the  fatal  wagon.  Such  a  dreadful  multitude 
may  God  keep  from  the  death-scene  of  every  man 
whose  guilt  is  not  double-dyed  !  There  was  no  attempt 
to  classify  it.  Shaggy-bearded  horsemen  trampled 
under  hoof  swarming  footmen,  boys,  and,  shame  to 
say  it,  women.  Here  and  there  stood  the  unhitched 
wagons  of  whole  families  who  had  come  in  from  dis- 
tant ranches  to  make  gala-day  of  the  execution. 
These  were  the  objects  of  general  envy,  for  the  view 
from  their  pedestals  was  not  only  more  commanding, 
but  more  comfortable.  It  was  a  selfish  sort  of  enjoy- 
ment to  sit  one's  saddle  at  such  a  place.  Stern  Jus- 
tice and  Domestic  Felicity  were  both  satisfied  in  the 
little  family  party  which  sat — grown  people  on  boards, 
children  on  knees,  babes  in  arms  —  cracking  grim 
jokes  with  each  other  till  the  dreadful  melodrama 
should  begin. 

The  trial  was  a  short  one.  It  was  testified  that  the 
two  accused  had  proceeded  to  the  ranche  of  an  old 
farmer  living  twenty  miles  out  in  the  wilds  back  of 
Atchison;  had  beaten  him  insensible  with  a  pistol- 
butt  ;  knocked  his  wife  down  with  a  chair ;  and  then 
hung  his  boy,  a  child  of  twelve  years,  till,  to  save 


^ 

THE   SETTING   OUT.  5 

himself  from  suffocation,  he  consented  to  reveal  the 
hiding-place  of  the  farmer's  funds.  Taking  these, 
which  amounted  to  forty  dollars,  and  all  the  horses  in 
the  corral,  they  had  returned  to  the  Missouri,  con- 
verted the  animals  into  cash,  and,  without  the  least 
attempt  at  absconding,  began  to  enjoy  their  gains  in 
speculation.  Three  days  from  the  date  of  their  crime 
they  were  in  the  hands  of  Lynch. 

These  facts  having  been  announced  to  the  crowd, 
an  opportunity,  as  they  say  in  other  assemblies,  was 
given  for  the  brethren  to  make  a  few  remarks.  One 
man  on  horseback,  better  dressed  and  more  refined 
in  his  appearance  than  the  rest,  held  the  attention  of 
the  crowd  with  a  speech  of  equal  force  and  freedom 
from  temper,  in  which  he  drew  a  sketch  of  the  de- 
fenselessness  which  would  result  to  the  settler  if,  in 
his  lonely  cabin,  he  could  not  be  sure  that  prompt  and 
certain  vengeance  hung  over  his  would-be  assassins. 
The  people  heard  him  with  a  running  fire  of  mur- 
murs, —  saying,  «  Good  !  "  "  That's  it !  "  and  « I'm 
there  too ! "  when  he  concluded  his  little  speech  with 
a  vote  for  the  instant  death  of  both  the  bushwhack- 
ers. He  was  followed  by  others  who  spoke  less  ably,  but 
all  to  the  same  point ;  and  the  crowd  finally  decided 
that  the  younger  man  should  be  executed  at  once, 
—  the  elder  have  respite  till  the  next  day  but  one 
succeeding.  I  may  be  uncharitable  to  communities  of 
incipient  civilization,  but  the  respite  seemed  to  me 
granted  rather  with  a  view  to  thrifty  economy  of 
pleasures  than  for  the  sake  of  pity  and  completed 
shrift.  Indeed,  one  person  told  me,  "  If  we  hung  'em 
both  on  Thursday,  we  shouldn't  have  anybody  to 
hang  on  Saturday." 

The   sentence   being   determined,  its  subject  was 


6  THE  HEART  OF  THE  CONTINENT. 

asked  by  the  immediate  committee  in  charge,  what  he 
had  to  say  for  himself. 

"  Nothing/'  he  replied,  in  a  tone  of  nonchalance  ; 
"  only  that  you're  going  to  murder  a  better  man  than 
any  of  yourselves." 

He  was  lifted  to  the  wagon ;  surveyed  the  stony 
faces  of  the  crowd  with  a  quick  glance  that  took  in  no 
single  look  of  pity ;  the  rope  was  adjusted,  the  wagon 
driven  away,  and  there,  a  horrid  fruit  of  man's  hateful 
passions,  he  hung,  uncovered  to  all  vengeful  eyes,  and 
the  pure,  sweet,  but  unhelping  heaven  of  May,  quiver- 
ing from  the  limb  of  the  cotton- wood. 

This  is  the  wickedness  of  Lynch  executions.  Like 
old  Tyburn,  they  r.ear  more  gallows-birds  than  they 
intimidate.  The  horribly  hardening  effects  of  public 
deaths  was  visible,  audible  in  all  the  crowd.  As  the 
poor  wretch  swung  there,  now  past  injuring  them,  and 
to  all  noble  natures  an  object  of  pity,  if  only  for  the 
first  time,  the  men  cracked  their  brutal  jokes,  and 
women  laughed  at  them.  Mothers  pointed  their  boys 

to  the  tree,  not  as  to  a  warning,  but  a  spectacle. 

• 

"  This  is  not,  nor  it  cannot  come  to  good  !  " 

With  glutted  eyes  and  unmoved  hearts  the  crowd 
slowly  withdrew  from  their  place  of  fascination  ;  but, 
as  their  murmur  lessened,  the  air  was  broken  with 
wails  of  agony  which  might  have  melted  a  Marat. 
Lying  at  full  length  in  a  wagon  outside  of  the  crowd's 
former  hem,  a  young  woman,  without  friend  or  com- 
forter, was  crying  aloud  for  a  husband  whom  she  called 
God  to  witness  had  been  cruelly  murdered. 

These  things  are  too  horrible  to  dwell  upon.  We, 
at  the  East,  are  apt  to  think  that  the  punishment  of 
our  old  national  transgressions  is  all  condensed  in  the 


THE  SETTING   OUT.  7 

war  which  has  smitten  us  so  sorely.  But  I  felt 
within  myself,  that  day  at  Atchison,  that  the  bitter 
seed  sown  by  ruffians  under  the  aegis  of  our  Federal 
Government  never  bore  fruit  more  poison  to  the  con- 
stitution of  society  than  such  executions  as  had  just 
taken  place.  It  is  but  little  wonder  that  the  contempt 
for  law,  as  the  sum  of  all  atrocities  under  a  sanctified 
disguise,  which  was  studiously  cultivated  among  the 
people  of  Kansas  by  a  past  Administration,  should 
breed  to-day  all  manner  of  cruelties,  though  the  pow- 
ers that  be  have  changed.  Barbaric  habitudes  of  so- 
ciety cannot  be  nurtured  for  years,  and  then  uprooted 
in  a  week.  The  arrow  has  been  withdrawn  from  her 
heart;  but  "bleeding  Kansas"  bleeds  still. 

I  know  all  the  palliations  which  a  young  society 
may  plead  for  its  excesses ;  but  I  must  say  that  the 
recklessness  which  met  me  in  the  street,  at  the  busi- 
ness places,  in  my  hotel,  after  the  execution,  made  me 
wonder  whether  I  was  on  earth  or  in  hell.  Women 
in  the  dress  of  ladies  leaned  across  the  tea-table  and 
asked,  "Have  you  been  to  the  hanging? "  with  as 
much  sang-froid  as  a  New  Yorker  might  say,  "  Have 
you  seen  Faust  ?  "  Then,  between  sips  of  tea  and 
bites  of  biscuit,  such  as  had  been,  regaled  those  who 
had  not,  with  particulars  that  made  a  stranger  sicken 
at  his  food. 

I  was  expressing  my  surprise  to  an  indigenous  ac- 
quaintance made  that  morning,  when  he  replied, 
"  Haven't  been  long  in  Kansas,  have  you  ?  "  "  Six 
hours,"  I  informed  him.  "  Thought  so.  Lord  bless 
you,  nobody  thinks  anything  of  being  hanged  in  this  . 
country !  Why,  in  one  Kansas  settlement  there  lived 
an  old  man  who  was  too  lazy  to  do  anything  for  his 
living,  and  whose  neighbors  had  to  support  him,  until 


8  THE  HEART   OF   THE   CONTINENT. 

finally  they  got  tired  of  sendin'  on  him  things,  and  con- 
cluded to  put  him  out  of  his  misery.  When  he  stood 
on  the  wagon,  with  the  rope  around  his  neck,  one  new 
settler  in  the  crowd  took  pity  on  him,  and  called  out, 
'  Hold  hard !  ye  needn't  hang  him.  I'll  give  him  ten 
bushel  o'  corn/  i  Is  it  shelled  ? '  drawled  the  old  man 
in  his  old,  lazy  voice.  '  No, — 'ta'nt,'  says  the  settler. 
£  Drive  on  with  your  wagon,'  says  the  old  man." 

After  which  veritable  history,  my  new  acquaintance 
looked  up  at  the  sky,  remarked  that  it  was  a  pity  they 
didn't  hang  both  the  bushwhackers, "  it  was  such  a 
nice  day  for  hangin',"  and  bid  me  good-by  with  regrets 
that  I  could  not  stay  over  to-morrow. 

To  turn  an  Eastern  man's  notions  still  more  com- 
pletely topsy-turvy  on  the  subject  of  tribunals  and 
government,  as  we  went  down  to  the  coach-office  to 
arrange  for  our  places  overland,  we  met  an  agent, 
whom  we  had  expected  to  transact  with,  going  over 
to  Leavenworth  between  two  dragoons,  to  answer 
before  the  Brigadier-General  of  the  Department  for 
having  violated  some  freight  contract  on  the  stage- 
route.  I  began  to  wonder  whether,  if  we  stayed  a  lit- 
tle longer  in  Atchison,  we  should  not  see  a  soldier 
tried  for  desertion  in  a  justice  court,  or  a  church- 
member  turned  out  of  the  fold  for  heresy  by  a 
surrogate. 

The  Massasoit  House,  though  far  enough  from  re- 
sembling its  ever-memorable  namesake  in  Springfield, 
was  still  a  very  creditable  hotel  for  a  place  on  the  ex- 
treme borders  of  civilization;  and  we  should  have  slept 
well  but  for  the  fact  that  a  party  of  ranchmen  and 
wagon-drivers,  who  had  come  into  town  for  holiday, 
saw  fit  to  end  their  pleasantly  stimulating  afternoon  by 
a  night  of  carouse  in  a  neighboring  rum-shop.  Fiddles, 


THE   SETTING   OUT.  9 

that  were  a  fortuitous  concourse  of  wood  and  catgut, 
without  any  attempt  to  systematize  them  or  their 
noise;  the  sound  of  heels  in  the  breakdown,  loud 
swearing  and  yells  for  drink,  kept  us  awake  till  a  late 
hour  of  our  last  night  on  the  Missouri  River.  It 
was  not  astonishing  that,  after  a  series  of  such  unim- 
agined  horrors  as  we  had  passed  through,  an  Eastern 
lady  just  arrived  should  have  asked  us  next  morning, 
"whether  those  were  bushwhackers  next  door." 

The  hour  of  eight  saw  us  embarked  upon  our  ve- 
hicle, with  all  the  baggage  which  it  was  absolutely 
necessary  to  carry :  our  commissary  stores  in  boxes 
under  our  feet,  where  they  might  be  easy  of  access  in 
any  of  those  frequent  cases  of  semi-starvation  which 
occur  at  the  stations  between  the  Missouri  and  the  Pa- 
cific. Our  guns  hung  in  their  cases  by  the  straps  of 
the  wagon-top ;  our  blankets  were  folded  under  us  to 
supplement  the  cushions.  To  guard  against  any  emer- 
gency, we  were  dressed  exactly  as  we  should  want  to 
be,  if  need  occurred  to  camp  out  all  night.  We  wore 
broad  slouch  hats  of  the  softest  felt,  which  made  capi- 
tal nighi>caps  for  an  out-door  bed ;  blue  flannel  shirts 
with  breast-pockets,  the  only  garment,  as  far  as  mate- 
rial goes,  which  in  all  weathers  or  climates  is  equally 
serviceable,  healthful,  and  comfortable;  stout  panta- 
loons of  gray  Cheviot,  tucked  into  knee-boots ;  re- 
volvers and  cartouche-boxes  on  belts  of  broad  leather 
about  our  waists ;  and  light,  loose  linen  sacks  over  all. 
I  may  here  anticipate,  in  order  to  dismiss  the  subject, 
by  saying  that  a  few  hundred  miles  made  some 
changes  expedient  in  our  attire.  We  doffed  our  sacks, 
and  rode  in  our  hunting-shirts ;  we  took  off  our  belts, 
and  slung  them  with  holsters  and  ammunition  beside 
our  guns ;  and  exchanged  our  boots  for  loose  slip- 


10        THE  HEART  OF  THE  CONTINENT. 

pers,  which  are  much  less  galling  during  a  pro- 
tracted wagon-journey,  keeping  the  former  close  at 
hand  for  use  when  we  had,  as  sometimes  happened,  to 
ease  the  horses  over  a  hard  piece  of  road  by  walking 
ourselves. 

The  Overland  Mail  vehicle  is  of  that  description 
known  as  the  Concord  wagon,  —  a  stout  oblong  box 
on  springs,  painted  red,  with  heavy  wheels  and  axles, 
having  a  flat  arched  roof  of  water-proof  cloth  erected 
on  strong  posts,  like  those  of  a  rockaway,  and  to  this 
are  attached  curtains  of  the  same  fabric,  which  in  bad 
weather  may  be  let  down  and  buttoned  so  tight  as  to 
make  the  sides  practically  as  proof  against  storms  as 
the  top.  In  fine  weather,  when  the  curtains  are  up, 
no  airier  arrangement  or  more  unobstructed  view 
could  be  desired.  The  seats  of  the  wagon  are  three, 
the  passengers  at  the  end  sitting  vis-a-vis ;  those  in 
the  middle  looking  forward,  with  their  backs  against 
a  strap  hooked  to  the  side-posts,  as  in  the  old-fashioned 
stage-coach.  Six  persons  can  ride  comfortably  inside, 
if  they  are  only  used  to  sleeping  in  an  upright 
position;  but  the  great  pressure  of  travel  to  Den- 
ver often  at  that  day  compelled  passengers  to  ride 
three  on  a  seat,  —  an  arrangement  calculated  to  give 
one  the  liveliest  ideas  of  the  horrors  of  a  negro  hold 
on  the  middle  passage.  By  the  politeness  of  Messrs. 
Ben  Holladay  and  Center,  we  were  furnished  with  such 
letters  to  the  Atchison  agent  of  their  line  as  insured 
us  a  stage  to  ourselves  as  far  as  Denver  ;  and  Mr.  Mun- 
ger,  the  superintendent  between  Atchison  and  Fort 
Kearney,  did  everything  in  his  power  to  make  our 
ride  as  comfortable  as  it  could  be.  Just  before  we  set 
out,  we  became  acquainted  with  a  Denver  gentleman, 
Mr.  Kershaw,  and  a  lady  in  his  charge,  who  were  both 


THE   SETTING  OUT.  11 

anxious  to  reach  Colorado  by  the  earliest  conveyance. 
We  accordingly  offered  them  our  remaining  seats,  and 
had  no  occasion  to  regret  the  hospitality,  finding  them 
most  pleasant  companions  as  far  as  they  went  with  us, 
and  becoming  afterward  indebted  to  them  for  many 
courtesies  in  Colorado. 

Just  before  we  left,  Mr.  Hunger  got  word  from  fur- 
ther west  that  the  buffaloes  had  started  northward  for 
their  summer  resorts,  and  were  now  reported  upon 
the  south  bank  of  the  Republican  Fork  of  the  Kaw. 
We  immediately  made  up  our  minds  not  to  lose  their 
visit,  as  we  might  have  no  second  chance  of  seeing 
them  in  their  glory,  perhaps  none  of  seeing  them  at 
all,  if  we  went  on  to  Denver  without  stopping,  and 
returned  from  the  Pacific  coast  —  as  was  then  possible, 
and  eventually  proved  actual — by  the  way  of  Pan- 
ama or  Nicaragua.  We  accordingly  made  arrange- 
ments with  Mr.  Munger  to  lie  by  and  wait  for  him 
about  one  hundred  and  eighty-five  miles  west  of 
Atchison,  at  Comstock's  Ranche  in  Nebraska.  He, 
meanwhile,  would  make  some  final  preparations  for  the 
proposed  foray  on  the  Kaw,  and  meet  us  at  the  ranche, 
or  overtake  us  on  the  road  in  his  light  double  buggy. 
The  good  sense  of  this  course  was  afterward  proved 
to  our  great  satisfaction,  as  we  never  again  saw  buffa- 
loes in  a  state  of  nature  after  leaving  the  Republican 
Fork,  passing  Fort  Kearney,  where  the  main  herd 
makes  its  most  frequent  transit  to  the  plains  north  of 
the  Platte,  some  weeks  before  they  crossed  the  road 
there. 

The  -Concord  wagon  rumbled  out  of  Atchison,  and 
we  were  fairly  on  "  The  Plains."  For  a  while  we  were 
accompanied  by  picket  fences ;  but  these,  in  despair 
at  the  idea  of  limiting  immensity,  soon  gave  way  to 


12       THE  HEART  OF  THE  CONTINENT. 

rails,  and  by  the  time  we  reached  Lancaster,  —  a  sta- 
tion merely,  not  a  town, — ten  miles  out  of  Atchison, 
the  rails  themselves  had  succumbed,  and  we  were  run- 
ning through  an  unbroken  waste. 

"The  Plains"  are  very  different  in  their  character 
from  the  Prairies.  Nowhere,  after  leaving  the  Mis- 
souri River  westward,  does  the  traveller  behold  such 
stretches  of  grass  running  to  the  horizon,  everywhere 
level  like  the  sea,  as  he  finds  in  Illinois.  The  great 
sedimentary  deposits  which  form  the  prairies  proper, 
were  laid  in  a  period  of  long  quiet,  and  denuded  of 
their  superadjacent  water  by  a  slow  uniform  upheaval, 
or  equally  slow  evaporation,  which  embraced  much 
larger  tracts  of  country  than  the  formative  influences 
further  west.  As  might  be  expected,  the  land  gives 
evidence  of  more  spasmodic  and  irregular  disturbances 
the  nearer  we  approach  the  great  spinal  mountain- 
chain  of  the  Continent. 

The  grass  around  us  was  long  and  rich.  Prairie- 
hens  abounded  in  it,  seeming  almost  as  tame  as  barn- 
yard fowl.  They  were  continually  coming  to  the  road 
and  running  ahead  of  the  horses,  so  close  to  us,  in- 
deed, that,  had  we  chosen,  we  might  have  bagged  the 
whole  party's  supper  from  the  wagon  as  we  rode. 
The  common  plover  were  only  less  plenty,  dodging 
about  in  the  grass  with  their  peculiar  culprit  manner 
as  we  approached.  The  mourning  dove,  a  little  crea- 
ture of  lovely  shape  and  typical  color,  whose  haunts 
embrace  the  entire  Plains  region,  fluttered  or  hopped 
constantly  about  us  in  pairs.  Several  varieties  of 
hawks,  one  of  which  we  afterward  discovered  to  be  a 
true  falcon;  some  large  ravens,  and  a  species  of 
meadow-lark,  were  the  other  principal  birds  which  at- 
tracted our  attention  on  this  day. 


THE   SETTING  OUT.  13 

The  air  was  delightfully  soft,  the  sky  clear,  and  the 
road  in  excellent  condition,  even  without  considering 
that  Nature  and  the  wheels  of  travel  are  here  the  only 
menders  of  highway.  In  some  places  it  was  as  com- 
pact and  smooth  as  the  finest  gravel  roads  of  the  East. 
Indeed,  with  the  exception  of  the  portion  traversing 
the  terrible  desert  of  Utah,  and  a  few  shorter  pieces 
elsewhere,  the  entire  route  astonished  me  by  its  ex- 
cellence. 

Just  after  sundown  we  arrived  at  Seneca,  a  settle- 
ment as  well  as  a  station,  sixty  miles  from  Atchison. 
Here  we  took  tea  in  quite  an  ambitious  frame  tavern, 
and  our  eyes  lay  lingeringly  on  the  shingle  of  Civili- 
zation's last  justice  of  the  peace.  There  was  a  tin- 
shop  in  Seneca ;  I  think  a  lawyer's  office ;  and  there 
were  several  dwelling-houses. 

After  the  darkness  came  on,  and  we  rolled  away 
from  Seneca  into  its  darkness,  I  began  to  realize  that 
we  were  not  going  to  stop  anywhere  for  the  night.  It 
was  a  strange  sensation,  this ;  like  being  in  an  arm- 
chair, and  sentenced  not  to  get  out  of  it  from  the 
Missouri  to  California. 

I  do  not  know  whether  it  is  necessary  to  inform 
anybody  that  the  Overland  Mail  travelled  night  and 
day.  I  had  known  it  always,  but  I  never  felt  it  till 
about  twelve  o'clock  the  first  night  out,  when  my  legs 
began  growing  unpleasantly  long,  and  my  feet  swelled 
to  such  a  size  that  they  touched  all  the  boxes  and 
musket-butts  upon  the  floor.  When  these  symptoms 
were  further  accompanied  by  a  dull  heat  between  the 
shoulders,  and  a  longing  for  something  soft  applied  to 
the  nape  of  the  neck,  I  wondered  whether  this  was 
not  what  people  on  shore  called  wanting  to  go  to  bed. 
The  facilities  for  such  a  gratification  were  so  amus- 


14        THE  HEART  OF  THE  CONTINENT. 

ingly  scanty  that  I  concluded  I  must  be  mistaken. 
The  back  cushions  of  the  wagon  were  stuffed  as  hard 
as  cricket-balls,  and  the  seat  might  have  been  the  flat 
side  of  a  bat.  I  tried  fastening  my  head  in  a  corner 
by  a  pocket-handkerchief  sling ;  but  just  as  uncon- 
sciousness arrived,  the  head  was  sure  to  slip  out,  and, 
in  despair,  I  finally  gave  over  trying  to  do  anything 
with  it.  At  Guittards',  a  station  famous  among  such 
passengers  as  have  reached  the,re  in  proper  season  for 
delicious  suppers,  we  to-night  stopped  only  long 
enough  to  change  horses,  and  I  took  advantage  of  the 
halt  to  climb  to  the  box.  Here  I  rode  the  rest  of  the 
night,  convinced  that  I  could  not  surrender  to  Sleep 
until  he  had  made  a  more  protracted  siege  around  the 
outworks.  I  felt  convinced  that  my  friends  inside 
would  not  miss  me,  they  having,  some  time  before, 
reached  that  stage  of  sensation  in  which  a  stage-floor 
seems  piled  with  human  feet.  When  the  fresh  team 
started  out  with  a  plunge,  and  the  fresh  night-breath 
of  the  Plains  began  fanning  my  forehead,  the  fever  of 
unsuccessful  sleepiness  left  me,  and  I  enjoyed  myself 
as  much  as  if  I  were  not  sure  it  would  return  to- 
morrow. 

During  the  night,  near  a  small  settlement  called 
Marysville,  we  forded  the  Big  Blue,  one  of  the  largest 
streams  in  this  portion  of  Kansas  —  timbered  with  cot- 
ton-woods, sycamores,  oaks,  and  occasional  elms  — 
and,  a  little  after  sunrise,  stopped  at  "  Seventeen  Mile 
Point,"  one  hundred  and  eleven  miles  from  Atchison, 
and  the  last  station  this  side  of  Nebraska. 

The  stations  on  the  Overland  Road,  between  the 
Missouri  and  Denver,  generally  consist  of  a  single 
wooden  house,  with  stables  attached,  and  a  large 
corral,  or  inclosed  yard,  just  adjacent.  Some  of  the 


THE  SETTING  OUT.  15 

more  ambitious  station-keepers  cultivate  several  acres 
of  land  adjoining,  in  which  case  the  traveller  is  de- 
lighted by  the  entrance  of  fresh  vegetables  into  a  bill 
of  fare,  which  is  elsewhere  unqualified  pork  and  greasy 
potatoes.  Occasionally,  too,  the  station-keeper  has 
both  time  and  penchant  for  hunting ;  the  happy  re- 
sult being  buffalo-hump,  antelope-steaks,  and  fricassee 
of  prairie-chickens.  But  the  majority  of  these  impor- 
tant personages  seem  to  have  retired  from  the  world 
under  the  influence  of  an  ascetic  spirit,  and  take  grim 
delight  in  visiting  the  wrongs  inflicted  upon  them  by 
the  society  which  they  have  left,  on  the  innocent  way- 
farer compelled  to  pay  for  their  hospitality.  Many  of 
them  have  married  copartners  in  their  social  grudge ; 
stern  females,  who  boil  bad  coffee  in  an  affronted  man- 
ner, and  hand  you  hot  saleratus  biscuit  with  an  air  of 
personal  insult.  All  their  principal  supplies  are  drawn 
from  Atchison  by  the  Mail  Company's  conveyances ; 
and  it  is  no  unusual  occurrence  to  lack  sugar  as  well  as 
milk  in  your  tea, because  "that  stage"  hasn't  brought 
up  the  last  order.  The  station-keepers  charge  variously 
from  fifty  cents  in  Kansas  to  a  dollar  in  Nebraska, 
and  westward,  for  every  meal,  without  regard  to  qual- 
ity. Their  charges  upon  the  passengers  they  collect 
personally  (though  it  is  possible  to  buy  meal-tickets 
at  Atchison  for  the  whole  route) ;  the  board  of  the 
drivers  is  paid  by  the  Company,  who  keep  an  account 
with  the  keepers  for  them  and  the  stable-tenders. 

While  breakfast  was  cooking,  I  loaded  a  shot-gun, 
and  started  out  for  a  short  excursion  in  search  of 
prairie-hens.  Though  we  had  seen  numbers  of  them 
along  the  road,  I  was  unable  to  start  a  single  one  in 
the  grass.  This  I  found  to  be  the  ordinary  case  at 
this  hour  of  the  morning  and  season  of  the  year. 


16        THE  HEART  OF  THE  CONTINENT. 

They  wait  till  the  sun  is  high  and  warm  before  they 
come  out  to  strut  and  coquet  with  each  other,  —  be- 
ing the  dandies  and  people  of  elegant  leisure  in  the 
social  system  of  the  Plains.  I  got  back  to  the  station- 
house  with  the  charge  in  my  gun,  yet  with  pleasant 
sensations  of  willingness  to  be  charged  myself,  due  to 
more  than  a  mile's  tramp  through  the  rich  grass  of 
the  breezy  divide. 

Just  beyond  the  breakfast-place  we  entered  Ne- 
braska. The  country  now  became  wilder  and  some- 
what more  sterile.  The  signs  of  human  occupation 
disappeared  entirely,  and  with  them  the  prairie-chick- 
ens became  less  and  less  abundant.  These  fowl,  as 
may  be  known,  flourish  best  in  the  neighborhood  of 
settlements,  —  sometimes,  like  quail,  relying  princi- 
pally, over  tracts  of  many  miles  square,  for  most  of 
their  subsistence,  upon  gleanings  from  the  rick  and 
stubble  field.  When  found  to  any  extent  in  perfectly 
wild  regions,  they  occupy  some  secret  spot  far  in  the 
bosom  of  the  Plains,  where  their  natural  food  is  steady 
and  abundant;  but  they  always  prefer  grain  when 
they  can  get  it,  and  will  accompany  wagons  or  stages 
for  miles  to  pick  up  the  droppings.  Though  the  prai- 
rie-fowl diminished,  the  plovers  and  doves  were  still 
abundant. 

At  Virginia  City,  one  hundred  and  thirty  miles  from 
Atchison,  the  stage  stopped  for  dinner  about  noon ; 
but  our  recollections  of  a  station  breakfast  were  not 
sufficiently  fascinating  to  tempt  us  into  sitting  down 
at  table.  We  now  had  occasion  to  congratulate  our- 
selves on  our  provision  in  the  matter  of  commissary 
stores,  for,  opening  one  of  the  boxes  under  our  feet, 
we  lunched,  alfresco,  under  lee  of  the  station-barn,  on 
pilot-bread,  sardines,  and  canned  peaches.  Our  trav- 


THE  SETTING  OUT.  17 

elling  larder  contained,  beside  many  duplicates  of 
such  a  lunch  as  this,  apple-butter,  put  up  by  the  Shak- 
ers ;  preserved  green  corn  and  tomatoes ;  jars  of  as- 
sorted pickles,  tamarinds,  and  cans  of  beef,  prepared 
by  a  process  which  left  nothing  but  salt  and  heating 
necessary  for  the  creation  of  a  capital  ragout.  Before 
these  stores  were  exhausted  we  had  repeated  occa- 
sion to  thank  them  for  three  meals  a  day,  several 
days  in  succession.  Indeed,  wherever  we  stopped 
long  enough  to  do,  or  get  any  cooking  done,  on  our 
behalf,  we  always  varied  our  else  carnivorous  meal  by 
something  succulent  from  the  Shakers'  tins. 

By  this  time  the  whole  party  were  greatly  distressed 
from  loss  of  sleep.  A  more  sad-eyed,  out-all-nightish 
set  I  never  saw  anywhere.  But  all  of  them  except 
myself  were  just  far  enough  gone  in  fatigue  to  take 
cat-naps  against  their  strap  or  in  their  corners!  My 
head  was  swollen  with  fever,  but  I  could  not  succumb. 
After  half  an  hour's  vain  attempt  at  sleeping  in  a  heap, 
I  left  my  room  to  the  others  who  were  in  a  condition 
to  prefer  it  to  the  company  of  the  best  of  friends,  and 
once  more  sought  the  stage-box,  where  it  was  blowing 
a  gale  of  wind  that  made  fever  and  hats  alike  difficult 
to  hold  on  to. 

Our  driver  was  a  terrible  fellow,  with  all  the  fin- 
gers missing  from  one  hand, — the  most  profane  man 
and  the  greatest  braggart  I  ever  saw.  He  alternately 
drank  from  a  black  bottle  and  praised  his  own 
driving,  until  the  reins  dropped  out  of  his  remain- 
ing fingers,  and  he  himself  would  have  gone  headlong 
from  the  box,  had  I  not  grasped  his  collar.  We  had 
just  crossed  a  high  bridge  without  parapets  over  one 
of  the  numerous  streams  in  this  region,  called  Big  or 
Little  "  Sandy;"  the  leaders  stopped,  and  began  facing 


18        THE  HEART  OF  THE  CONTINENT. 

the  pole,  and  we  were  in  imminent  danger  of  being 
tipped  over  or  backed  dpwn  the  steep  bank.  I  jumped 
down  upon  the  pole,  and  caught  the  reins  just  in 
time  to  save  us;  our  Denver  friend  leaped  out  with 
his  pistol  drawn,  and  induced  the  driver  to  descend  a 
little  quicker  than  liquor  and  gravity  combined  would 
have  brought  him ;  after  which,  with  a  word  of  expla- 
nation directed  around  the  side  to  our  friends  within, 
we  left  the  fellow  who  had  nearly  murdered  us,  cur- 
sing his  tortuous  way  along  the  road,  and  drove  to 
the  next  station  ourselves.  In  mentioning  this  occur- 
rence, I  should  say,  as  an  act  of  justice  to  the  com- 
pany and  its  drivers,  that  it  was  a  very  exceptional 
case  to  see  a  drunken  man  on  an  Overland  box.  The 
only  repetition  of  it  in  our  whole  journey  occurred  in 
the  Rocky  Mountains,  just  beyond  Fort  Bridger,  and 
then  without  any  accident.  It  is  due  to  the  drivers 
as  a  class  to  say  that  they  usually  astonished  me  by 
an  abstemiousness,  under  circumstances  of  great  soli- 
tude, monotony,  and  temptation,  which  would  have 
done  credit  to  any  man  of  business  in  an  Eastern  city. 
Many  of  them,  on  principle,  or  from  a  sense  of  their 
responsibility,  would  not  drink  at  all. 

Between  Big  Sandy  and  Comstock's  we  got  our  first 
experience  of  a  thunder-storm  on  the  Plains.  At  sun- 
set the  clouds  were  piled  into  an  ebon  staircase,  draped 
with  gold,  mounting  from  the  western  horizon  to  the 
zenith ;  and  as  the  daylight  declined,  the  massive  steps 
became  tessellated  every  now  and  then  with  lightning 
working  across  them  silently  in  strange  patterns.  The 
weather  had  been  very  warm  all  day,  and  we  thought 
likely  that  this  exhibition  would  prove  nothing  more 
than  the  heat-lightning  of  our  Eastern  summer  even- 
ings. But  about  nine  o'clock  we  were  undeceived. 


THE   SETTING  OUT.  19 

The  sky  "meant  business."  The  agency  that  wrought 
those  delicate  traceries  of  golden  sprig  and  anastomos- 
ing vein-work  began  to  have  a  voice.  At  the  foot  of 
the  great  stair  came  a  rumbling  and  a  groan,  as  if  the 
giants  were  beginning  to  climb.  It  grew  louder,  and 
here  and  there  step  parted  from  step,  then  the  struc- 
ture lifted  at  the  base  and  descended  at  the  top,  mak- 
ing a  series  of  black  blocks  and  boulders,  hanging 
downward  from  the  same  level  of  sky  with  lurid 
interstices  between  them,  through  which  the  upward 
depths  looked  awful.  Never  in  my  life  did  I  see  cloud 
distances  graded  with  such  delicacy.  One  could  almost 
measure  them  by  miles  from  the  inky  surface,  hang- 
ing with  torn  fringes  of  leaden  vapor  just  above  our 
head,  up  through  the  tremendous  chasms  flecked  along 
their  wall,  with  dying  gold  and  purple  color,  with  won- 
derful light  and  shadows,  and  marked  by  innumerable 
changes  of  contour,  to  the  clear  but  angry  sky  that 
paved  the  farthest  depth  of  the  abysses.  I  rode  on  the 
box  for  an  hour  looking  into  these  glorious  rifts  with 
fascinated  eyes.  Then  between  their  walls  began  a 
hurrying  interplay  of  lightning,  and  the  great  artillery 
combat  of  the  heavens  commenced  in  earnest.  At  first 
the  adjoining  masses  had  their  duels  to  themselves, — 
battery  fighting  battery,  pair  and  pair.  Half  an  hour 
more,  and  the  forces  had  perceptibly  massed, — their 
fire  coming  in  broader  sheet,  their  thunder  bellowing 
louder.  An  hour,  and  the  fight  of  the  giants  became 
a  general  engagement.  The  whole  hemisphere  was  a 
blinding  mass  of  yellow  flame  at  once,  and  the  reports 
were  each  one  instantaneous  shock,  which  burst  the 
air  like  the  explosion  of  a  mine.  Then  the  wind  rose 
to  a  hurricane ;  and  before  the  dust  could  be  set  whirl- 
ing by  it,  there  followed  such  a  flood  of  rain  as  I 


20       THE  HEART  OF  THE  CONTINENT. 

never  saw  anywhere,  on  sea  or  land.  Sitting  on  the 
box  still,  for  I  had  much  rather  be  soaked  than  desert 
such  a  spectacle,  I  found  my  breath  taken  away  for  the 
first  minute,  as  if  I  had  been  under  a  waterfall.  It 
was  not  drops,  nor  jets,  nor  a  sheet ;  it  was  a  mass  of 
coherent  water  falling  down  bodily.  Five  minutes 
from  the  time  it  began  to  wet  us,  the  horses  were  run- 
ning fetlock-deep,  with  the  road  still  hard  under  their 
hoofs,  for  the  soil  had  not  yet  had  time  to  dissolve  into 
mud.  Torrents  were  flowing  down  every  incline; 
where  the  plain  basined,  the  water  stood  in  broad 
sheets  revealed  by  the  flashes,  like  new  ponds  suddenly 
added  to  the  scenery.  Still  the  storm  did  not  spend 
itself  in  wind  and  water.  The  lightning  got  broader, 
and  its  flashes  quicker  in  succession ;  the  thunder 
surpassed  everything  I  have  heard,  or  read,  or  dreamed 
of.  Between  explosions  we  were  so  stunned  that  we 
could  scarcely  speak  to  or  hear  each  other,  and  the 
shocks  themselves  made  us  fear  for  the  permanent  loss 
of  our  hearing.  One  moment  we  were  in  utter  dark- 
ness, our  horses  kept  in  the  road  only  by  the  sense  of 
feeling;  the  next,  and  the  vast  expanse  of  rain-tram- 
pled grass  lay  in  one  embrace  of  topaz  fire,  with  the 
colossal  piles  of  clefted  cloud  out  of  which  the  deluge 
was  coming, — earth  and  heaven  illumined  with  a 
brightness  surpassing  the  most  cloudless  noon. 

Suddenly  there  appeared  before  us  a  portent,  of 
which  I  had  read  accounts  in  scientific  annals,  but 
which  I  had  never  seen  before  and  never  expect  to  see 
again.  There  was  a  temporary  lull  in  the  conflict 
above  us.  Into  the  blackness  there  rose  out  of  the 
ground,  apparently  from  a  high  divide,  not  a  mile  be- 
yond our  leaders,  a  column  of  lightning  sized  and 
shaped  like  the  trunk  of  a  tall  pine.  Straight  and 


THE   SETTING  OUT. 

swift,  but  with  a  more  measurely  motion  than  that  of 
the  higher  discharges,  it  shot  up,  shedding  its  glare 
for  many  rods  around,  and  making  a  sharply  cut  band 
of  fire  against  the  black  background  of  the  clouds, 
until  it  struck  the  nearest  mass  of  vapor.  Then,  with 
the  most  tremendous  flash  and  peal  of  the  whole 
storm,  its  blazing  capital  broke  into  splinters,  and  went 
shivering  across  the  area,  right  over  our  heads.  If  it 
were  only  possible  to  paint  such  things !  But  on  can- 
vas they  would  seem  even  more  theatrical  than  they 
do  in  these  inadequate  words.  In  all  the  wrath  of 
nature,  —  mad  hurricanes  and  thunder-storms,  on  sea 
or  land,  —  there  never  visited  me  anything  to  com- 
pare in  awful  splendor,  and  the  impression  of  ungov- 
erned  power,  with  this  upward  lightning-stroke  on  the 
Nebraska  Plains. 

Out  of  the  deluge,  the  flame,  and  the  roar,  we  sud- 
denly saw  a  corral  and  log-house,  at  our  right-hand ; 
a  small  stream,  swollen  to  a  torrent,  under  tall  cotton- 
woods,  upon  our  left.  The  former  were  "  Comstock's ;  " 
the  latter  was  the  Little  Blue.  Drenched  to  the 
skin,  but  happy  with  the  memory  of  the  greatest  night 
in  my  life,  I  jumped  down,  and  passed  one  of  the  box- 
lanterns  inside  to  be  lighted,  for  the  first  time,  by  my 
comparatively  dry  companions.  This  effected,  we 
opened  the  curtains  sufficiently  to  let  them  escape ; 
with  the  assistance  of  the  driver,  got  out  of  the  boat 
all  such  dunnage  as  we  intended  to  stop  with  us ;  and 
by  the  time  everything  was  disgorged  but  our  guns, 
succeeded  in  awakening  the  occupants  of  the  ranche 
to  a  sense  of  our  needs.  Comstock  came  to  the  door 
with  a  lantern  of  his  own,  and  as  soon  as  we  pro- 
nounced the  words  "Munger"  and  "  buffalo  hunt," 
welcomed  us  with  a  cordiality  as  cheering  as  dry 


22  THE  HEART  OF  THE  CONTINENT. 

stockings.  A  moment  more,  and  all  our  belongings 
were  whisked  out  of  the  torrent  into  a  long  apart- 
ment, floored  with  hewn  plank  and  nicely  weather- 
tight  ;  the  whip  cracked  on  the  off  leader's  withers ; 
and  saying  good-night  to  our  late  comrades,  with  an 
accompaniment  of  thunder,  we  saw  them  whirl  away 
into  the  glare,  and  shut  the  ranche  door  between  us 
and  the  storm. 

A  tall  ladder  led  up  from  the  kitchen,  reception- 
room,  and  bed-chamber  we  had  just  entered,  into  the 
"men  folks'  "  loft,  above.  Ascending  it,  under  Corn- 
stock's  guidance,  we  found  a  number  of  sturdy  ranche- 
men  snoring  defiance  to  the  outer  storm,  and  without 
ceremony  dropped  down  in  our  blankets  on  the  inter- 
vals of  floor  between  them.  As  we  have  seen,  it  can 
'  thunder  in  Nebraska,  —  but  not  loud  enough  to  break 
such  slumber  as  then  and  there  fell  incontinently 
upon  our  prostrate  forms! 


; 


CHAPTER  II. 

COMSTOCK'S.  —  A  BUFFALO  HUNT. 

COMSTOCK  had  the  early  habits,  without  the  aggres- 
sive and  proselyting  spirit,  of  most  pioneers.  He  pit- 
ied our  Eastern  weakness,  and  let  us  sleep  late,  which, 
in  Nebraska,  means  the  sybaritic  hour  of  eight  A.  M. 
It  was  still  raining  when  we  arose ;  but  it  was  only 
a  trickle  compared  with  the  night  before.  A  Euphu- 
ist,  indefatigable  in  hunting  metaphors  to  earth,  might 
have  said  that  the  sky  looked  like  a  battle-field  the 
day  after  an  engagement,  where  the  exhausted  clouds 
lay  still,  mangled  with  lightning,  and  bleeding  lymph 
from  all  their  wounds  down  upon  the  world  below. 
Or  he  might  have  compared  it  to  a  great  ball-room, 
where  the  dancers  had  waltzed  themselves  to  death 
to  the  music  of  the  thunder-band,  and  were  now 
strewn  prostrate  on  the  floor  of  their  late  revel,  amid 
the  drippings  of  ruptured  goblet,  flask,  and  wassail 
bowl.  To  the  matter-of-fact  person,  it  was  simply 
raining,  and  after  a  style  which  promised  steady  con- 
tinuance all  day;  but  whether  the  "tireless  heavens" 
looked  fagged  to  him  or  not,  he  must  have  acknowl- 
edged that  he  felt  so,  had  he  been  of  our  party.  We 
had  not  yet  reacquired  the  old  muscular  tone  of  for- 
mer forest-  camps,  which  makes  sleep,  on  a  log-floor 
and  a  blanket,  as  refreshing  as  on  the  springiest  mat- 
tress. We  were  a  little  lame,  and,  though  we  said 
nothing  about  it,  were  unable  to  regard  eight  A.  M., 


24       THE  HEART  OF  THE  CONTINENT. 

an  hour  so  luxuriously  late  as  it  appeared  to  our 
sturdy  host,  our  last  late  breakfast  having  been 
eaten,  like  others  of  the  series,  at  half-past  eleven  in 
New  York.  Yet  we  were  undeniably  refreshed  from 
the  sore,  wide-awake  sleepiness  of  the  day  before ; 
and  a  capital  meal  of  stewed  buffalo-hump  and  ante- 
lope-steak, washed  down  by  coffee,  surprisingly  realis- 
tic for  this  latitude  of  pease  and  chickory  ideals, 
creamed,  moreover,  from  the  sumptuous  and  unmis- 
takable udders  of  nature,  proved  palatable  to  us  in 
the  highest  degree. 

I  like  so  much  to  think  of  the  Comstocks — one  of 
the  best,  truest,  kindest  families  of  pioneer  people  we 
met  in  our  whole  journey,  and  having  no  equals  for 
typical  character  or  native  goodness  in  our  experience, 
short  of  Sisson's  delightful  ranche  at  the  foot  of  Shasta 
Peak,  in  California, — I  enjoy  their  memory  so  heart- 
ily, that  I  am  fain  to  spend  a  portion  of  this  rainy 
Nebraska  day  in  making  their  portraits  for  my 
readers. 

Comstock  himself  is  a  man  about  sixty-three,  with 
a  head  and  face  like  the  pictures  of  De  Quincey.  In 
contour  only,  not  in  expression ;  for  in  the  wrinkles 
around  his  eyes  lurks  a  Yankee  waggery,  which  no 
English  face,  even  the  shrewdest,  ever  simulates.  His 
hair  is  grizzled  and  wiry,  such  as  belongs  to  the  iron 
temperament.  He  is  of  the  medium  height,  com- 
pactly made,  and  in  every  limb  and  lineament  shows 
the  training  of  over  half  a  century's  pioneer  life, 
hardship  having  braced  instead  of  shaken  him.  He 
began  his  history  in  the  western  part  of  New  York 
State,  when  bear-hunts  were  still  an  accessible  pastime 
to  people  in  the  vicinity  of  Kochester,  and  all  the  now 
smiling  lawns  and  meadow-lands  of  the  region  were 


COMSTOCK'S.-A  BUFFALO  HUNT.  25 

howling  wildernesses,  here  and  there  intersected  by  a 
bridle-path.  From  his  earliest  manhood  he  has  been 
pressing  the  front  of  barbarism.  He  has  lived  succes- 
sively in  Michigan,  Wisconsin,  Minnesota,  Texas,  and 
Nebraska.  As  fast  as  civilization  has  come  up  to  his 
stake  set  in  the  wilderness,  he  has  pulled  it  up,  and 
travelled  to  some  newer  domain,  beyond  the  atmos- 
phere of  artificial  society.  There  is  that  in  him  which 
cannot  tolerate  fine  gentlemen,  town-meetings,  polit- 
ical claptrap,  and  the  gossip  of  mixed  communities. 
As  his  eldest  son  said  of  himself,  so  he  might  say, 
"  I  cannot  breathe  free  in  sight  of  fences :  I  must  be 
able  to  ride  my  horse  where  I  like."  Yet,  for  all  this, 
there  is  nothing  about  him  of  the  barbarism  he  has 
been  fighting ;  nothing  of  asceticism  or  misanthropy 
toward  the  society  he  has  left  behind.  He  is  a  de- 
vouring reader.  The  crannies  of  his  log-house  are 
full  of  old  magazines — newspapers  of  ancient  date  — 
well-read  and  re-read  books.  He  takes  the  liveliest 
interest  in  everything  that  concerns  the  East ;  he  is 
thoroughly  acquainted  with  the  names  that  have 
figured  most  largely  in  our  public  records,  and  has  a 
general  knowledge  of  recent  literature  which  sur- 
prised me.  He  was  never  tired  of  hearing  about  New 
York,  Boston,  Philadelphia,  their  prominent  people 
and  institutions.  I  think  he  felt  the  same  kind  of 
interest  in  them  that  a  boy  feels  in  the  Island  of 
San  Juan  de  Fernandez.  An  ideal  blessedness  sur- 
rounds Robinson  Crusoe,  to  our  youthful  fancy,  al- 
though on  stern  logical  considerations,  we  should  not 
care  to  be  cast  upon  an  uninhabited  island  ourselves. 
Nothing  would  tempt  Comstock  to  live  in  a  great 
city ;  yet  its  diminished  roar,  heard  far  off  on  the  rear 
of  the  buffaloes,  fascinates  him  like  weird  music.  He 


26       THE  HEART  OF  THE  CONTINENT. 

was  driven  out  of  Texas  by  the  corrupt  manners  of 
the  slavocracy  around  him,  and  he  loves  Freedom  as 
he  loves  air.  He  never  tires  of  talking  about  people 
who  have  helped  her  at  the  East.  "  I  would  go  fur- 
ther/' said  he  one  day,  "to  take  a  look  at  Henry 
Ward  Beecher,  than  to  see  the  biggest  old  buffalo-bull 
that  ever  ran." 

Comstock  is  a  widower,  with  a  large  family  of  chil- 
dren, most  of  them  living  with  him,  and  two  of  them 
having  children  of  their  own  under  his  roof.  On  the 
Plains  there  is  none  of  our  Eastern  necessity  of  leav- 
ing home  to  push  one's  fortune.  There  is  plenty  of 
pushing  to  be  done  in  home's  immediate  neighbor- 
hood,— plenty  of  room  to  push,  where  a  family  is 
surrounded  everywhere  by  league  on  league  of  the 
most  fertile  soil,  which  has  never  been  appropriated, 
recorded,  or  even  surveyed  for  the  market.  The  Lit- 
tle Blue  is  fringed  with  cotton- wood  of  lofty  growth : 
men  and  axes  are  the  only  remaining  conditions 
for  a  house  and  a  corral.  To  be  sure,  cotton-wood 
timber  has  one  unpleasant  idiosyncrasy :  even  while 
it  is  growing,  all  the  crevices  of  its  bark  swarm  with 
that  wretched  insect  which  has  received  its  name  from 
the  slovenly  beds  of  corrupt  civijization,  and  con- 
ferred on  them  their  main  horror ;  but  a  good  sea- 
soning removes  the  pest,  and  I  must  say  for  Corn- 
stock's  that  I  never  found  an  individual  of  the  species 
while  I  stayed  there.  As  for  grain-land  and  pasture- 
lot,  the  only  problem  with  the  family  is  the  point  of 
the  compass  towards  which  they  shall  run  the  plough 
or  drive  the  cattle;  the  consideration  of  how  far 
never  once  intrudes  upon  their  minds.  The  absence 
of  fences  makes  it  necessary  to  keep  a  tolerable  stud 
of  horses  for  the  chase  of  stray  steers.  Occasionally 


COMSTOCK'S.  —  A  BUFFALO  HUNT.       27 

a  herd  of  emigrant  cattle  goes  past,  along  the  Over- 
land trail,  and  not  altogether  unbeknown  to  its  driv- 
ers, who  are  never  celebrated  for  clear  notions  on 
portable  property,  absorbs  a  nice  yoke  of  Comstock's 
animals,  who  chance  to  be  feeding  by  the  wayside. 
These  have  to  be  followed  up  and  reclaimed,  —  a  mat- 
ter which  may  cost  a  day's  rough  riding,  but  noth- 
ing in  the  shape  of  litigation,  where  there  are  no 
courts  or  lawyers,  and  little  in  the  nature  of  alterca- 
tion, where  everybody  has  so  many  cattle  that  two, 
more  or  less,  are  not  worth  a  squabble.  This  is  the 
main  anxiety  affecting  the  Comstock  mind.  It  is 
quite  unbothered  with  cumbersome  and  costly  prep- 
arations for  the  wintering  of  stock.  It  needs  and 
builds,  no  barns  or  stables.  The  climate  is  at  no  sea- 
son so  severe  that  animals  require  more  than  the 
shelter  of  a  corral  or  an  open  shed.  All  over  this 
region  the  luxuriant  grass  cures  on  the  ground, 
and  makes  inexhaustible  winter  feed,  without  the 
trouble  of  mowing  and  stacking.  The  snows  never 
last  long  enough  to  starve  out  the  herds  left  running 
at  large.  They  sleep,  as  well  as  graze,  on  the  open 
plain,  all  the  year  round,  never  being  driven  in,  save 
to  yoke,  brand,  or  milk  them.  These  facts  make  the 
pastoral  life  almost  Arcadian,  as  far  as  labor  is  con- 
cerned. When  a  pioneer,  like  Comstock,  has  secured 
a  few  fine  breeding  animals,  he  is  in  possession  of  the 
easiest  managed  and  most  rapidly  increasing  capital 
in  the  world. 

Beside  his  herds,  Comstock  attends  to  farming,  in  a 
moderate  way, —  raising  sufficient  corn  for  his  horses' 
use,  when  work  takes  them  out  of  pasture,  and  grain 
enough  to  keep  his  family  supplied  with  flour.  He 
has  a  vegetable  patch,  just  across  the  Little  Blue  from 


28       THE  HEART  OF  THE  CONTINENT. 

his  corral,  whose  deep,  rich  loam  and  thrifty  crops 
would  delight  the  heart  of  any  suburban  market 
gardener. 

The  necessities  of  life  press  a  man  so  little  in  this 
bounteous  region,  that  a  comparatively  small  propor- 
tion of  any  day  is  devoted  by  the  Comstocks  to  actual 
labor.  Comstock  himself  is  as  sturdy  at  sixty-three 
as  he  was  at  forty,  and  goes  out  to  the  patch,  across 
his  log  bridge,  with  a  hoe  over  his  shoulder,  stepping 
as  elastically  as  if  he  had  pastime  before  him.  His 
boys  go  with  him ;  and  after  a  forenoon  of  steady  work, 
all  come  in  to  dinner,  and  seldom  return  again  to  any 
heavier  labor  than  breaking  colts,  hunting,  or  chasing 
es trays.  Within  an  hour's  ride,  across  the  Blue,  ante- 
lope are  nearly  as  plenty  as  anywhere  on  the  Plains; 
and  one  afternoon's  good  sport  will  replenish  the 
Comstock  larders  with  the  best  fresh  meat  known  to 
wild  or  civilized  bills  of  fare. 

George  Comstock,  the  eldest  son  of  the  old  pioneer, 
lives  with  him  in  a  partition  of  the  ranch  -  house,  — 
whose  front  is  devoted  to  miscellaneous  emigrant  sup- 
plies, while  its  rear  is  the  sitting-room  of  a  thrifty  Mrs. 
George  and  the  nursery  of  a  rising  family.  In  all  the 
delightful  old  genre  pieces  of  the  Dutch  artists,  and 
the  eccentric  old  places  in  Wapping  and  Holborn 
which  the  character-novelists  of  London  love  to  paint, 
there  is  nothing  more  original  than  the  sight  of  that 
shop  and  dwelling-room  combined :  where  slouching 
teamsters  take  their  pull  at  the  beer-mug  or  Jamaica 
bottle,  on  their  way  to  California,  across  a  counter 
where  the  family  bread-batch  rests  in  transitu  to  the 
oven ;  where  a  pile  of  hickory  shirts  lies  for  sale  on  a 
shelf  beside  the  family  tea-kettle ;  where  the  cradle  and 
the  cooking-stove  are  inextricably  mixed  with  vinegar 


COMSTOCK'S.  —  A  BUFFALO  HUNT.        29 

barrels  and  meal-sacks  ;  where  the  babies  play  Hide- 
and-seek  behind  piles  of  wagon  canvas,  and  the  house- 
wife's work-basket  is  flanked  by  rows  of  Osgood's 
Cholagogue.  In  this  omnium  gatherum  of  commerce 
and  the  family  I  found  most  unsuspectable  things : 
copies  of  the  "  New  York  Herald/'  fresh  with  all  the 
bloom  of  last  month ;  a  luxury  of  advanced  civilization 
known  as  ready-prepared  egg-nog;  a  sewing-machine; 
all  kinds  of  canned  fruit  from  the  Shaker  settlements  ; 
Sunday  suits  of  great  gloss,  with  a  certain  tenuity  in 
the  legs  and  arms,  the  very  thing  for  a  rotund,  muscu- 
lar lover,  fearless  of  exhibiting  his  outlines ;  bandanna 
handkerchiefs  shaming  the  flamingo ;  plug-tobacco  in 
great  swarthy  cubes;  trace-chains,  ox-yokes,  frying- 
pans,  Little  Songsters,  beaver-skins  taken  in  barter, 
looking-glasses,  felt  hats,  ticking  clocks, — but  let  me 
not  attempt  the  inventory  of  a  collection  which  sur- 
prised me  as  much  out  on  the  rim  of  the  buffalo  herds 
as  it  would  have  surprised  Crusoe  to  have  been  washed 
ashore  from  the  wreck  into  the  front  door  of  a  branch 
of  A.  T.  Stewart's.  The  shop  is  a  house  of  call  to  all 
the  emigrants  and  drivers  on  their  way  westward,  and 
adds  not  a  little  to  the  revenue  of  the  Comstocks,  who 
deserve  everything  they  can  make,  since  people  fairer 
and  less  huckstering  in  their  nature  exist  nowhere. 

To  return  to  the  other  side  of  the  house.  The  me- 
nage of  Comstock,  Senior,  is  in  charge  of  his  two  daugh- 
ters, Frank  and  Mary,  who  for  skillful  housewifery, 
sterling  common  sense,  and  native  refinement,  are  sur- 
passed by  few  women  whom  I  ever  met  at  the  East. 
It  was  a  perpetual  surprise  to  me  to  hear  girls  whose 
whole  life  had  been  spent  on  the  Plains  or  in  the  back- 
woods, talk  of  Longfellow  and  Bryant,  Dickens  and 
Thackeray,  Scott  and  Cooper,  when  they  came  in  from 


30        THE  HEART  OF  THE  CONTINENT. 

milking,  and  sat  down  in  their  plain  calicoes  to  knit  the 
masculine  stockings  or  mend  the  infantile  pinafores. 
Nobody  could  talk  more  understandingly,  criticise 
more  justly,  or  appreciate  more  fully  everything  in 
their  authors  that  related  to  natural  feeling ;  and  if 
this  book  ever  gets  out  to  them  (as  I  mean  it  shall),  I 
shall  be  more  interested  in  knowing  their  opinion  of  it 
than  that  of  most  critics  who  shall  overhaul  me  in 
the  cities.  It  is  the  pride  of  our  American  system 
that  such  womanly  culture  can  coexist  in  the  Nebraska 
wilds  with  those  sturdy  administrative  qualities  which 
subdue  savagery  into  a  home,  and  fight  the  battle 
for  a  civilization  which  shall  presently  come  and  build 
cities  on  their  conquered  field.  Place  on  the  frontiers 
of  any  other  country  in  the  world  a  family  of  women 
isolated  from  all  the  luxuries  and  softening  influences 
proper  to  their  sex,  and  after  a  few  years  have  gone 
over  their  heads  you  will  find  a  set  of  female  boors 
living  in  a  slovenly  hut.  But  "the  peasantry"  have 
no  status  in  America.  The  nearest  approach  to  them 
which  we  found  in  all  our  journeying  was  here  and 
there  a  houseful  of  unfortunate  "Pikes"  or  "Butter- 
nuts," whom  slavery  had  degraded  below  the  black 
level  before  they  escaped  from  its  miasma,  and  the  first 
generation  of  whom  still  lay  entangled  in  the  accursed 
traditions  of  an  accursed  system,  while  the  second 
and  third  were  gradually  struggling  out  into  the  light 
of  new  ideas.  But  even  here  there  was  a  dim  sense 
of  something  better  to  be  had  for  the  trying  which 
does  not  exist  among  the  disheartened  lower  strata  of 
social  Europe.  As  for  the  Comstocks,  they  were  truly 
typical  American  people.  They  understood  the  sci- 
ence of  pioneering  as  a  chemist  understands  analysis 
and  reactions ;  but  just  as  one  of  our  chemists  would 


COMSTOCK'S.  —  A  BUFFALO  HUNT.       31 

/ 

bestir  himself,  and  make  his  way  up  in  the  world,  if 
ill-fortune  drove  him  to  the  gold- diggings,  so  would 
they  within  three  years7  time  adapt  themselves  to  any 
social  conditions  into  which  fate  might  force  them,  and 
lay  the  foundations  of  a  family  whose  position  would 
be  prominent  in  any  town  where  it  might  live.  I  was 
hourly  surprised  to  see  the  self-reliance  of  these  sisters. 
They  were  sometimes  left  alone  in  the  ranche  for 
a  day  at  a  time,  all  the  "  men-folks  "  being  off  on  a 
hunt  or  elsewhere  out  of  call.  On  several  such  occa- 
sions a  detachment  from  one  of  the  numerous  Indian 
bands  who  -make  this  region  by  turns  a  neutral  and  a 
fighting  ground,  poured  in  to  make  the  "  lone  women  " 
a  compulsory  visit.  Now,  an  Indian  visit  is  no  joke. 
Even  where  a  tribe  pretends  to  be  friendly,  its  only 
distinction  between  that  and  the  hostile  bearing  is, 
that  instead  of  scalping  you  first  and  robbing  you 
afterward,  it  takes  all  the  property  it  can  lay  hands 
on,  and  leaves  your  hair  for  a  more  convenient  season. 
A  band  of  "  friendly  "  Sioux  comes  to  a  small  settle- 
ment, stops  at  the  first  house,  emaciates  itself  by 
drawing  in  the  cheeks  and  abdomen,  denotes  by  sepul- 
chral grunts  and  distressed  gestures  that  it  has  had 
nothing  to  eat  for  "  three  shneep "  (whereby  three 
sleeps,  or  entire  days  and  nights,  are  intended),  seizes 
on  everything  edible  and,  if  the  white  feather  is  shown 
it,  everything  portable  which  it  can  appreciate  beside ; 
confiscates  guns,  ammunition,  and  whiskey,  and,  hav- 
ing cleared  out  house  number  one,  goes  in  succession 
to  every  other  dwelling  with  the  same  emaciation, 
gesture,  and  appropriation,  until  it  departs  at  the  other 
end  of  the  settlement  stuffed  beyond  the  elasticity  of 
all  conceivable  animals  save  Indians  and  anacondas, 
and  loaded  with  the  materials  for  a  month's  barter 


32       THE  HEART  OF  THE  CONTINENT. 

and  a  fortnight's  "  drunk."  I  asked  Mary  Comstock  if 
she  was  not  afraid  of  such  visitors.  "0  no !  "  she 
replied ;  "  we  always  get  the  guns  out  of  sight  when 
we  are  left  alone  by  the  men-folks,  so  that  if  the  In- 
dians come  we  needn't  be  robbed  of  what  must  defend 
us  on  a  pinch  ;  and  if  we  see  them  coming,  we  bolt  the 
doors,  and  talk  with  them  through  the  shut  window. 
Sometimes  they  steal  a  march  on  us,  and  the  first  thing 
we  know  they're  swarming  in  like  bees,  —  asking  for 
everything  they  see,  hunting  for  something  to  eat, 
and  begging  to  be  "treated."  We  generally  give  'em 
everything  they  want  to  eat,  but  when  it  comes  to 
liquor, —  not  we !  One  young  Indian  last  summer  got 
mighty  sassy  when  his  band  came  here,  and  insisted 
on  having  something  to  drink.  At  last  I  got  a  bottle 
of  Perry  Davis's  Pain-killer,  and  handed  him  that. 
He  just  threw  his  head  back,  and  took  it  down  at  one 
swallow.  The  next  thing  he  gave  such  a  yell,  bolted 
through  the  door,  and  after  that  he  never  troubled 
me  much." 

Comstock  has  two  sons  with  him  beside  George,  both 
excellent  specimens  of  the  young  pioneer,  —  one  about 
twenty,  the  other  about  sixteen  years  old.  They  are 
fine  shots,  fearless  horsemen,  industrious  farmers  and 
herdsmen,  — with  the  same  rich  veins  of  original  hu- 
mor and  strong  common  sense  which  run  through  all 
the  other  members  of  the  family.  Their  manners  are 
frank,  self-respectful,  and,  in  the  highest  sense  of  the 
word,  gentlemanly.  There  is  a  cordial  kindness  and  a 
native  refinement  in  all  they  do  or  say,  as  far  from  the 
artificial  politeness  or  elegant  puppyism  which  we  too 
often  find  in  our  city  boys  at  the  East,  as  from  the 
rustic  greenness  and  awkwardness  with  which  the 
traditions  of  romance  and  the  stage  invest  the  young 
backwoodsman. 


COMSTOCK'S.  —  A  BUFFALO   HUNT.  33 

Beside  these  children  of  Comstock's  and  others  of 
.the  third  generation,  the  log-cabin  shelters  a  number 
of  ranch-men  and  hunters,  who  assist  in  caring  for  the 
crops  and  herds,  and  purveying  for  the  family  with 
their  rifles.  A  young  Philadelphian,  William  Butler, 
who  built  the  ranch  as  an  emigrant  trading-post,  sell- 
ing it  to  Comstock  on  the  death  of  his  brother  and 
partner,  lives  here  when  he  is  not  in  the  saddle  or  in 
camp.  Willard  Head,  a  dashing  horseman,  rejoicing  in 
gorgeous  leather  breeches  of  Mexican  manufacture, 
adorned  with  shiny  bell-buttons  all  the  way  up  the 
leg,  makes  this  his  rendezvous  while  awaiting  promo- 
tion to  the  box  of  an  Overland  stage.  Last,  but  as 
characteristic  a  pioneer  as  any  of  the  family,  comes 
John  Gilbert, —  a  weather-bronzed  youth  of  twenty- 
five,  with  the  most  resplendent  set  of  teeth,  blue  eyes 
full  of  uncontrollable  waggery,  and  a  pair  of  hands 
skilled  in  every  department  of  frontier  craft,  from 
throwing  a  lariat  to  building  a  house.  His  sight  is  as 
keen  as  an  Indian's.  This  by  itself  makes  him  a  capi- 
tal shot,  and,  combined  with  quick  intuitions  and  great 
experience,  a  guide  unsurpassed  by  any  I  ever  saw. 
Crowning  his  excellent  physical  qualities  are  a  dry 
wit  and  inexhaustible  backwoods'  humor  which  would 
keep  a  camp  cheerful  if  reduced  to  mule-meat  and 
wild  onions. 

The  second  day  after  our  arrival  at  Comstock's 
proved  as  fair  and  sunny  as  we  could  desire.  Every- 
thing had  been  prepared  for  our  expedition  to  the 
buffalo  country.  A  sack  of  flour,  a  small  keg  of  salt 
pork,  a  box  of  hard-tack,  a  gridiron,  two  frying-pans, . 
some  camp-kettles,  a  pile  of  tin  plates,  and  a  lot  of 
knives  and  forks ;  a  judicious  selection  from  our  own 
party's  private  stores,  consisting  of  pickles,  canned 


34       THE  HEART  OF  THE  CONTINENT. 

fruits,  condensed  milk  and  coffee,  —  all  these,  and 
numerous  small  boxes  containing  the  condiments  for 
a  reinforcement  of  nature's  hunger-sauce,  stood  in  a 
pile  that  looked  like  moving-day,  at  the  door  of  the 
ranche  by  seven  o'clock  in  the  morning.  Hunger  of 
the  Overland  Road  had  reached  us  with  his  double 
buggy  and  two  fast  horses  on  the  evening  before.  Af- 
ter breakfast  we  immediately  set  out  in  the  following 
order.  The  artist  of  the  expedition,  Hunger,  and  my- 
self, with  a  pair  of  rifles,  a  shot-gun,  and  the  large 
color-box  which  accompanied  our  entire  journey,  occu- 
pied the  buggy.  Butler,  George  and  Ansell  Comstock, 
John  Gilbert,  and  the  two  remaining  gentlemen  of  our 
party  went  in  a  couple  of  large  farm-wagons  drawn  by 
teams  belonging  to  the  ranch.  Willard  Head,  and 
Thompson  of  the  Overland  station  to  the  eastward 
of  us,  which  bore  his  name,  escorted  us  as  skirmishers, 
each  on  his  own  horse. 

We  forded  the  Little  Blue  just  across  the  road  from 
the  ranch,  passed  the  thrifty  vegetable  patch  which 
supplied  the  Comstock  table,  and  at  once  struck  south 
over  the  trackless  plain.  The  grass  was  tall  and  lux- 
uriant, but  not  so  close  as  to  impede  our  animals.  In 
spite  of  the  recent  rain-storm,  the  ground,  matted  with 
grass-roots,  bore  our  hoofs  and  wheels  as  firmly  as  a 
trotting-course.  Everybody  was  in  high  spirits.  To 
men  just  out  of  the  hot-house  of  New  York  life,  the  air 
and  -sunshine  were  fairly  intoxicating.  Life  swarmed 
around  us  more  luxuriously  at  every  step.  The  wild 
flowers  of  the  Plains  were  a  perpetual  source  of  hap- 
piness to  the  eye.  They  made  royal  splashes  of  high 
color  on  the  sunny  sides  of  all  the  divides;  they 
checkered  the  rich  green  of  the  ravines  with  delicious 
contrasts ;  and  every  now  and  then,  as  the  grass  waved, 


COMSTOCK'S.  —  A  BUFFALO   HUNT.  35 

glowed  upon  us  out  of  their  secret  nurseries  among 
the  tall  blades,  like  tangled  sunshine  getting  woven 
through  the  herbage  by  the  shuttle  of  the  wind.  Be- 
fore we  left  home  I  had  deeply  regretted  our  failure 
to  include  a  practical  botanist  in  our  party ;  I  regretted 
it  still  more  when  we  were  among  the  lavish  Flora 
of  the  Plains ;  and  most  of  all,  having  to  describe  so 
inadequately  what  might  have  been  treated  so  well, 
do  I  regret  it  now.  But  this  makes  no  pretense 
to  be  a  purely  scientific  book,  and  I  must  not  omit 
to  rehearse  the  beauties  which  rejoice  the  tourist,  be- 
cause I  cannot  say  how  they  would  strike  the  botanist. 

Over  all  the  higher  lands  of  the  rolling  plain  which 
we  were  traversing  abounded  a  pink,  purple,  crimson, 
or  sometimes  nearly  white  blossom,  known  here  as  the 
Indian  pea.  It  grows  on  a  long,  villous  flower-stalk, 
around  which  both  blossoms  and  leaves  are  symmet- 
rically arranged ;  its  pistil  is  carried  in  a  sheath,  with 
the  stamens  about  its  base,  and  its  fruit  is  a  pod  in 
shape  like  a  large  flattened  gooseberry,  containing 
seeds  of  the  size  of  a  pin-head.  This  pod  is  edible 
when  boiled  in  salt  water;  at  least,  it  is  eaten,  though 
to  an  Eastern  epicure  its  taste  is  undisguisably  rank. 
The  Indian  pea  at  this  season,  when  in  full  blossom, 
both  from  its  profusion  and  the  variety  of  its  tints,  is 
one  of  the  most  important  contributions  to  the  beauty 
of  the  Plains. 

Prairie  roses  are  abundant  everywhere  on  this  por- 
tion of  the  Plains.  I  found  the  yellow,  white,  and  pink 
varieties,  all  of  which  are  luxuriant  in  blossom  and 
deliciously  fragrant.  The  tiny  blue  star-grass  lurks 
everywhere  among  the  taller  herbage ;  and  in  many 
places  I  saw  a  variety  of  sorrel  (  Oxalis  acetocella ) 
bearing  yellow  blossoms  as  large  as  a  good-sized  but- 


36        THE  HEART  OF  THE  CONTINENT. 

tercup,  though  in  every  other  respect  it  appears  quite 
identical  with  our  Eastern  plant.  Along  the  "borders 
of  the  small  streams,  especially  where  the  ground  was 
shaded,  grew  a  small  variety  of  our  evening  primrose, 
of  several  tints,  from  pale  straw-color  to  nearly  orange ; 
and  in  low,  moist  spots  I  noticed  several  specimens  of 
a  flower  only  differing  from  this  in  the  possession  of 
black  spots  and  a  carinated  structure  dividing  the 
corolla  into  segments,  upon  the  middle  of  each  of  the 
petals.  Another  plant,  which  seemed  to  me  a  species 
of  the  abutilon,  had  handsome  cupellate  blossoms  of  a 
deep-orange  color,  striated  longitudinally  along  the 
petals  with  delicate  pale  yellow.  Here  and  there  grew 
a  white  species  closely  allied  to  our  garden  "  rocket;" 
and  a  wild  sunflower,  with  a  root  which  I  found  quite 
as  edible  and  as  flavorous  as  our  Jerusalem  artichoke, 
was  very  common  on  all  the  slopes  of  the  divides. 

But  the  two  most  charming  flowers  of  the  region, 
the  one  for  its  perfume,  the  other  for  its  color,  were  a 
tiny  species  having  the  habits  and  appearance  of  the 
water-lily,  to  whose  family  I  supposed  it  to  belong,  and 
a  crimson  cup  as  large  as  a  small  althea,  whose  only 
name  among  the  ranche  people  was  "the  ground 
poppy,"  though  whether  it  be  really  allied  to  that 
plant  I  regret  my  inability  to  state.  Its  plant-leaves 
are  multilobed,  and  somewhat  like  those  of  our  own 
poppy ;  but  it  grows  upon  running  stalks  close  to  the 
ground,  and  to  unscientific  eyes  seems  quite  as  closely 
connected  with  the  mallows.  It  appears  in  patches 
varying  from  a  few  feet  to  several  rods  in  circuit,  and 
wherever  these  occur,  the  ground  is  one  gorgeous 
mass  of  magenta  fire.  It  is  the  glory  of  the  fertile 
plains  in  May  and  early  June,  and  we  afterward 
found  it  extending  for  miles  among  the  barren  -sand- 


COMSTOCK'S.  —  A  BUFFALO  HUNT.  37 

dunes  beyond  Fort  Kearney,  encroaching  upon  the  ter- 
ritory of  the  cacti  and  the  gramma-grass.  Wherever 
it  appears,  it  is  the  chief  visual  delight  of  the  Plains, 
Flora.  The  tiny  water-lily  above  mentioned,  I  only 
found  once  in  all  our  progress  to  the  buffalo  country. 
We  had  halted  at  the  bottom  of  a  wet-draw  to  water 
our  horses.  I  went  above  the  place  where  they  were 
drinking,  to  quench  my  thirst  at  a  brown  pool  which 
appeared  a  trifle  less  stagnant  than  their  watering- 
place,  and,  lying  down  with  my  face  over  the  water, 
noticed  an  exquisitely  subtle  fragrance  like  that  of 
tuberose  and  orange-flower  combined.  On  pushing 
away  the  weeds  which  grew  out  over  the  pool,  I  found 
a  nest  of  lovely  white  blossoms,  smaller  than  the  small- 
est strawberry-flower,  shaped  like  an  Eastern  water- 
lily  in  miniature,  with  delicate  yellow  stamens  and 
pistil,  and  moored  on  the  water  by  slender  green  fila- 
ments rooted  in  the  ooze  of  the  pool.  No  American 
blossom  that  I  am  acquainted  with,  not  even  the  trail- 
ing arbutus,  possesses  such  an  indescribable  ethereal 
fragrance  as  this  tiny  water-lily.  I  sought  in  vain  to 
preserve  specimens  of  it.  The  pages  of  the  note-book 
in  which  I  pressed  them,  absorbed  the  petals  as  if  they 
had  been  dew,  and  only  stains  were  left,  having  none 
of  the  flower's  characteristic  odor. 

We  had  been  travelling  less  than  an  hour,  and  had 
crossed  a  wet  ravine,  called  "  White  Ash  Draw,"  be- 
tween our  original  divide  and  the  next  further  south, 
when  we  saw  our  first  antelope.  He  was  a  mere  glanc- 
ing spot  on  the  sunny  side  of  a  slope  two  miles  off,  and 
disappeared  too  soon  to  be  resolved  by  the  field-glass. 
From  that  time  forward  we  were  continually  uncov- 
ering pairs  or  groups  of  these  lovely  creatures,  and 
before  noon  got  near  enough  to  some  of  them  for 


38        THE  HEART  OF  THE  CONTINENT. 

a  shot.  Butler's  rifle  brought  down  a  fine  young  buck. 
We  laid  him  in  one  of  the  wagons,  and  continued  our 
march. 

It  is  perhaps  no  exaggeration  to  call  the  antelope 
the  most  beautiful  as  well  as  the  swiftest  animal 
of  our  American  wilds.  His  size  is  that  of  a  young 
red-deer  doe;  his  color  a  compromise  between  buff 
and  fawn,  shading  here  and  there  into  reddish-brown, 
with  a  patch  of  pure  white  on  the  buttocks  which 
gives  rise  to  the  Western  term  expressive  of  his  stam- 
pede, "  showing  his  clean  linen."  His  ears  grow  far 
back  on  his  head,  are  long,  and  curve  so  much  that  at 
a  distance  they  appear  like  horns.  The  horns  them- 
selves grow  so  immediately  over  the  supra-orbital  pro- 
jection as  to  seem  coming  out  of  the  animal's  eyes ; 
they  are  long,  slender,  have  a  comparatively  slight 
retro-curve,  and  show  no  sign  of  branching,  save  a  lit- 
tle bud  which  is  developed,  as  in  the  engraving,  near 
the  root,  when  the  antelope  is  about  two  years  old. 
The  older  bucks  are  occasionally  found  with  other 
rudiments  of  this  kind. 

The  chief  peculiarity  of  the  antelope  is  his  lack  of 
a  "  a  dew-claw."  His  feet  have  no  rudimentary  hoof 
like  the  deer's.  He  is  almost  or  quite  an  anomaly  in 
this  respect  among  the  tribes  with  which  he  is  al- 
lied. Whatever  that  deficiency  may  amount  to,  it 
certainly  does  not  interfere  with  his  speed,  which  is 
almost  incredible,  even  to  an  eye-witness.  We  could 
scarcely  believe  that  our  sight  had  not  deceived  us, 
when,  at  one  moment,  we  saw  one  of  these  little 
creatures  plainly  with  the  naked  eye,  browsing  on  a 
slope  fifty  yards  off,  the  next  beheld  him  dwindling 
to  a  mere  speck,  and  the  next  lost  sight  of  him  alto- 
gether. His  flight  was  more  like  that  of  a  bird  than 


COMSTOCK'S.  — A  BUFFALO  HUNT.  39 

a  quadruped,  sometimes  rather  like  a  rocket  than 
either.  Occasionally  we  surprised  a  pair  of  antelopes 
on  a  wide  area  of  even  ground,  where  we  could  watch 
their  stampede  for  a  longer  period  without  obstruction ; 
and  the  study  of  their  motion  became  a  perfect  de- 
light to  the  eye.  They  seldom  or  never  leapt  like 
deer,  but  ran  with  level  backs,  and  in  smooth  rhythm, 
like  sheep,  —  their  legs  glancing  faster  than  sight 
could  follow.  We  got  no  expression  for  this  peculiar 
gait  till  George  Comstock,  looking  at  a  flock  of  them 
in  full  flight,  ejaculated,  idiomatically,  "  Lord !  don't 
they  open  and  shet  lively  !  " 

It  was  quite  amusing  to  see  them  baffle  the  attempts 
of  one  of  our  mounted  men,  whose  enthusiasm  over- 
came his  experience.  Clapping  spurs  to  his  horse,  he 
rode  with  all  his  might  at  a  flock  of  them,  feeding 
within  long  rifle-shot,  and  came  about  eighty  yards 
from  them  before  they  snuffed  him  and  turned  tail. 
For  nearly  ten  minutes  they  treated  him  as  a  butter- 
fly treats  a  school-boy.  Putting  half  a  mile  between 
them  and  his  panting  horse  in  as  little  time  as  it  takes 
to  write  it,  they  paused,  stood  with  their  noses  in  air, 
and  seemed  to  be  having  a  quiet  laugh  among  them- 
selves ;  let  him  approach  nearly  as  close  as  before, 
and  then  floated  away,  on  a  line  at  right  angles  to 
their  former  retreat,  tempting  him  with  the  delusion 
that  he  might  head  them  off  As  often  as  he  turned, 
they  repeated  these  tactics,  until  at  last  he  stopped, 
quite  provoked  at  himself,  and  with  his  horse  thor- 
oughly winded,  to  see  their  "  clean  linen  "  flash  for  an 
instant  in  the  sun,  as  they  went  out  of  sight  among 
some  thick  cotton-woods,  on  the  edge  of  a  distant  run. 
It  was  ahout  as  hopeful  a  piece  of  business  as  trying 
to  run  down  a  telegraph  message. 


40       THE  HEART  OF  THE  CONTINENT. 

Later  in  the  day,  we  learned  the  only  way  to  hunt 
antelope  with  unvarying  success.  It  is  an  old  Indian 
method,  and  the  white  men  on  the  Plains  have 
learned  as  much  adroitness  in  it  as  their  exemplars. 
The  antelope  is  not  afraid  of  horses ;  and  by  walking 
in  the  cover  of  his  saddle-animal,  the  hunter  can  get 
quite  near  a  flock  without  being  discovered,  provided 
he  approaches  against  the  wind.  If  the  wind  blows 
from  him,  it  is  astonishing  how  quickly  their  scent 
warns  them  of  him,  without  the  least  aid  from  their 
eyes.  Having  got  as  near  them  as  he  dares  in  this 
way,  he  throws  the  coil  of  his  lariat  down  from  the 
saddle-horn,  crouches  and  pickets  his  horse  with  a 
sharp  stake,  always  carried  with  him  for  the  purpose. 
Lying  in  the  grass,  he  ties  his  bright  colored  bandanna 
(a  strip  of  white  cloth  will  answer,  faute  de  mieux) 
to  a  tall  sunflower  stalk,  his  ramrod,  or  a  stick  of  any 
kind.  If  still  too  far  off  to  attract  his  game,  he  crawls 
low  on  his  hands  and  knees,  dragging  his  rifle  by  his 
side,  until  he  reaches  a  spot  of  such  prominence  that 
they  would  be  sure  to  see  him  in  an  instant  if  he 
stood  up.  There  he  quietly  lies  down  again  on  his 
stomach,  and  lifts  his  extemporized  flag  as  high  as 
he  can  reach.  The  antelopes  see  it,  stop  browsing, 
raise  their  heads,  and  peer  forward  with  bulging 
eyes,  but  show  no  signs  of  fright.  The  flag  is  for  a 
moment  dropped  out  of  sight  into  the  grass.  The 
beautiful  creatures  lower  their  noses,  and  attempt  to 
resume  their  dinner.  But  there  is  something  on  their 
minds.  After  one  or  two  distrait  pulls  at  the  sweet 
grass-roots,  their  heads  are  again  lifted,  and  again 
they  peer  earnestly  forward.  Up  goes  the  flag 
once  more,  and  this  time  perhaps  with  a  slow  wav- 
ing motion.  The  antelopes'  curiosity  is  now  thor- 


ANTELOPES.     See  page  38. 


PRAIRIE   DOC!S.     See  page  4G. 


COMSTOCK'S.  —  A  BUFFALO  HUNT.       41 

oughly  excited.  For  an  instant  they  pause  irreso- 
lutely, then  make  two. or  three  hesitating  steps  in  ad- 
vance, snuffing  as  they  go.  Again  the  flag  is  lowered. 
They  turn  to  each  other,  and  seem  to  be  holding  a 
parley.  Their  inevitable  conclusion  is  that  they  will 
pursue  their  reconnoissance,  and  see  what  strange  bird 
that  is  fluttering  above  the  grass.  When  the  flag  is 
once  more  lifted,  they  advance  again,  and  finally,  un- 
less the  wind  shifts,  or  the  recumbent  hunter  finds  his 
patience  ebbing,  come  up  almost  within  pistol-shot  of 
his  ambush.  Crack  goes  his  rifle  ;  and  he  must  be  a 
poor  shot  indeed  if  one  of  the  beautiful  quarries  before 
him  does  not  turn  a  summerset  and  tumble  head- 
long. I  have  known  a  single  rifle-ball  do  the  business 
for  two  antelopes,  where  they  stood  in  range.  If  now 
the  hunter  does  not  discover  himself,  one  at  least  of 
the  remaining  antelopes  is  often  easily  bagged.  The 
survivors  dart  away  for  a  moment  from  the  side  of 
their  fallen  comrade,  but  do  not  go  far,  often  return, 
and  nearly  always  stand  still,  to  satisfy  their  own  cu- 
riosity, within  easy  rifle-shot  of  the  hunter.  But  un- 
less he  actually  needs  the  meat  at  once,  or  can  avail 
himself  of  it  before  it  spoils,  the  thorough-going  hun- 
ter of  the  Plains  is  too  chivalrous  and  merciful  (to 
say  nothing  of  economy,  in  a  country  where  game  is  as 
plenty  as  at  creation)  to  slaughter  a  beautiful  animal 
for  which,  despite  his  own  rough  exterior,  he  has  a 
true,  even  poetical,  admiration.  I  never  found  a  hun- 
ter on  the  Plains  (I  am  not  including  boy- tourists  and 
foreign  emigrants)  who  would  not  blush  to  emulate 
Gordon  Cummings. 

About  six  miles  south  of  the  spot  where  we  en- 
countered our  first  antelope,  we  saw  our  first  buffa- 
loes. John  Gilbert,  the  wariest  hunter  of  the  whole 


42        THE  HEART  OF  THE  CONTINENT. 

party,  rode  alongside  of  our  buggy,  and  quietly 
pointed  to  eight  or  ten  scattered  black  dots  on  a 
divide,  nearly  three  miles  away,  to  our  right.  Our 
glasses  revealed  their  character ;  and  I  should  be  al- 
most ashamed  to  let  an  old  hunter  know  what  a  fever 
of  enthusiasm  that  far-off  glance  communicated  to 
my  blood.  It  was  such  a  strange  jumble  of  feeling  to 
remember  operas,  National  Academy  pictures,  and  the 
crowd  on  Broadway,  so  close  on  the  heels  of  these 
grand  old  giants,  who  own  the  monarchy  of  the  Con- 
tinent's freest  wilderness.  I  felt  as  happy  as  a  green 
boy,  and  trembled  all  over.  Buffaloes  —  indubitable 
buffaloes — feeding  on  that  vast,  sunny,  fenceless 
mead,  in  as  matter-of-fact  and  bovine  a  manner  as 
any  New  England  farmer's  cows  on  one  of  Coleman's 
or  Shattuck's  elm-dotted  pasture-lots.  They  were  too 
far  away  to  take  any  notice  of  us,  and  proved  to  be 
only  the  outposts  of  the  herd, — the  extreme  advance 
of  venerable  bulls,  pushed  across  the  Eepublican  to 
reconnoitre. 

Just  after  we  saw  the  buffaloes,  I  had  a  remarkable 
instance  of  John  Gilbert's  delicate  Indian  training  as 
a  guide.  We  had  been  steering  all  the  morning, 
since  we  left  the  Blue,  by  the  points  of  compass,  but 
following  the  main  divides  for  the  sake  of  a  good 
track  as  closely  as  we  could  without  inconvenient  ab- 
erration from  the  ford  on  the  Republican,  for  which 
we  had  been  making.  The  ground  now  began  rising 
before  us,  and  we  came  to  a  place  where  the  divide 
forked.  "We  had  not  yet  seen  the  Republican,  nor  the 
timber  which  marked  its  first  bottom.  It  became 
a  question  to  us  which  way  we  should  turn,  east  or 
west,  as  nothing  more  entirely  without  landmarks 
than  the  Plains  out  of  sight  of  timber  can  well  be 
imagined. 


COMSTOCK'S.  —  A  BUFFALO  HUNT.       43 

John  Gilbert  was  called  upon  to  decide,  while  the 
party  halted.  He  rode  about  in  the  tall  grass  for  a 
few  moments  without  any  particular  appearance  of 
scrutiny,  and  finally  remarked, — 

"We'll  keep  to  the  eastward,  I  reckon.  Some  fel- 
low 's  gone  wrong  hereabouts  lately.  I  wonder  who 
it  could  be.  Hunger,  when  you  were  coming  along 
the  road,  did  you  pass  a  big  covered  wagon  and  a 
small  ambulance,  —  a  four-mule  team  hitched  to  one, 
and  a  span  o'  horses  on  t'other?" 

Munger  hadn't,  but  Thompson  had  seen  such  an 
"  outfit "  camped  near  his  station  the  day  before. 

"  Well,  that's  it :  it's  come  on  down  and  turned  off 
in  the  wrong  d'rection,  just  hereabouts." 

"  What's  IT?"  asked  the  uninitiated,  "and  where  is 
it  ?  There's  nothing  to  be  seen  of  that  kind." 

"0  yes,  there  is,"  replied  John,  positively.  "I've 
just  found  the  tracks.  Here's  one  set  o'  narrow  wheels, 
with  eight  big  hoof-marks  between  'em ;  and  a  sorter 
mixed  up  with  that  is  a  set  of  broad  wheels,  with  six- 
teen small  hoofs  in  between  them,  a  comin'  after  one 
another.  One  's  the  ambulance  and  horses.  T'other  's 
the  wagon  and  the  mules.  Then,  just  a  little  divided 
from  them,  and  /turnin'  easterly,  is  the  old  track  our 
wagon  made  when  we  come  down  a  shootin'  from  the 
ranche,  ten  days  ago.  So  easterly 's  our  way ;  and 
the  other  fellows  '11  get  lost,  I  reckon." 

To  satisfy  my  curiosity,  I  jumped  down  from  the 
buggy,  pushed  the  high  grass  away,  and  among  its 
matted  roots  discovered  something  like  the  marks  he 
described.  From  the  height  where  he  sat  on  horse- 
back, they  were  as  invisible  to  any  ordinary  eye  as 
if  they  had  been  at  the  bottom  of  the  sea ;  and  when 
I  did  discover  them,  they  would  have  been  as  illegible 


44        THE  HEART  OF  THE  CONTINENT. 

to  my  understanding  for  any  pathfinding  purposes  as 
if  they  were  cuneiform  inscriptions  on  a  slab  from 
Nineveh.  Still,  every  word  John  Gilbert  said  was 
afterward  substantiated ;  and  how  good  reason  I  per- 
sonally had  to  thank  my  stars  that  those  "fellows"  did 
go  astray,  as  well  as  who  they  were,  and  other  matters 
concerning  them,  will  all  plainly  appear  before  the 
close  of  this  chapter.  For  the  present,  I  refer  to  our 
quandary  only  as  a  remarkable  illustration  of  the  in- 
tuitional sixth  sense  acquired  by  a  man  like  Gilbert, 
in  protracted  frontier  experience.  It  must  be  remem- 
bered that  since  the  ranch-wagon  had  passed  <k>wn 
to  the  Republican,  "  ten  days  ago,"  the  tremendous 
rain-storm,  through  which  we  came  to  Comstock's, 
had  beaten  the  prairie  hard  enough  to  obliterate  any 
vestige  of  travel  on  an  ordinary  road. 

We  kept  to  the  easterly,  following  John  Gilbert's 
lead,  passed  the  rise  in  the  divide  of  which  I  have 
spoken,  and  came  to  the  brink  of  a  lofty  bluff,  from 
the  base  of  which  a  broad  plain  extended  two  miles  to 
the  now  clearly  visible  cotton-wood  fringe  along  the 
Republican.  We  were  compelled  to  ride  along  the 
edge  for  nearly  three  miles  further,  before  we  found 
a  draw  running  back  into  the  divide  with  sides  suf- 
ficiently gradual  to  permit  our  descent  to  the  river's 
first  bottom.  But  none  of  the  time  demanded  by  this 
detour  was  thrown  away.  The  view  from  the  brink 
was  one  of  the  loveliest  in  nature.  Broad  level  sun- 
shine flooded  the  green  plain  below  us,  and  drifting 
cloud-shadows  brought  out  the  contour  of  the  lofty 
bluffs,  which  alternately  projected  into  and  receded 
from  the  plain  on  the  river's  further  side.  Here  and 
there  the  fringing  cotton-woods  broke  away,  and  let 
up  to  us  pure  blue  glimpses  of  the  river,  itself  reflect- 


COMSTOCK'S.  —  A  BUFFALO   HUNT.  45 

ing  the  deeper  sapphire  of  the  summer  sky.  The  air 
was  wonderfully  clear,  —  distance  seemed  partially 
annihilated.  The  White  Rock  Buttes,  which  we  knew 
to  be  many  miles  away  to  the  southward,  came  out 
clear  and  strong,  so  that  we  could  see  the  undulations 
of  their  surface  almost  as  plainly  as  if  they  were  in 
the  near  foreground.  The  whole  extent  of  territory 
within  our  vision  was  as  fertile  in  appearance  as  the 
finest  meadow-lands  of  the  East,  and  so  closely  simu- 
lated cultivation  in  its  smooth  rolling  downs  and  level 
fields  that  the  eye  continually  looked  for  signs  of  hu- 
man residence,  and  found  ever  fresh  astonishment  in 
the  utter  loneliness  of  the  landscape.  It  was  as  if 
some  great  agricultural  nation  had  suddenly  been 
driven  out  of  its  ancient  possessions,  or  stricken 
quickly  asleep  by  magic  in  the  deep  green  groves 
along  the  river-bank.  But  without  apparent  hyper- 
bole it  is  impossible  to  convey  the  strange  impression 
of  this  lovely  region  of  lawns  without  mansions,  and 
farms  without  grange  or  barn. 

I  am  wrong  in  saying  "without  mansions;"  for  on 
our  descent  to  the  broad  alluvial  level  below  the  bluffs, 
the  faces  and  voices  of  merry  little  colonists  greeted 
us  on  every  hand.  The  river-bottom  was  so  riddled  by 
the  burrows  of  the  prairie-dogs  that  we  had  to  drive 
cautiously  lest  our  horses  should  sink  mid-leg  deep  at 
every  step.  I  have  travelled  for  miles  in  Nebraska 
and  Colorado  through  the  villages  of  these  marmots; 
but  I  never  saw  their  life  so  teeming,  and  their  habits 
so  active,  as  here  on  the  utterly  undisturbed  and  un- 
frequented border  of  the  Republican.  The  little  crea- 
tures made  the  air  lively  with  their  chattering,  which 
is  a  peculiar  short  shrill  squeak  rather  than  a  bark,  and 
the  honeycombed  soil  as  far  as  the  eye  could  see  was 


46        THE  HEART  OF  THE  CONTINENT. 

in  motion  with  their  antics.  They  were  to  be  seen  in 
every  variety  opposition.  Here  sat  one  on  the  top  of 
his  burrow,  completely  out  of  his  hole,  resting  on  his 
haunches,  nearly  upright  like  a  squirrel,  and  peering 
curiously  at  us  with  a  pair  of  shiny  black  eyes  till  our 
neighborhood  grew  too  close  for  his  nerves.  Another 
showed  both  head  and  tail  out  of  his  door,  keeping 
his  more  vulnerable  middle  below  the  edge  of  the 
earth-pile ;  and  the  still  more  cautious  dog  exhibited  a 
mere  nose-tip  above  his  entrenchment,  chirping  at  us 
occasionally  in  a  querulous  manner,  as  if  he  were  ask- 
ing what  in  the  world  could  be  our  business  in  his 
municipality.  We  made  several  attempts  to  get  spec- 
imens, but  failed  here,  as  we  indeed  did  everywhere 
else  where  we  attempted  the  thing.  In  the  first  place, 
it  was  almost  impossible  to  calculate  one's  aim  for  an 
object  projecting  so  short  a  distance  from  the  ground; 
and  in  the  second,  when  one's  shots  did  not  go  over 
or  fall  short,  there  was  always  enough  life  left  in  the 
little  animal  to  tumble  him  down  his  hole  beyond 
the  risk  of  capture.  So  we  soon  abandoned  the  job. 
The  people  on  the  Plains  have  an  effective  but  rather 
tedious  way  of  catching  prairie-dogs  alive.  They  draw 
a  barrel  of  water  to  some  isolated  hole  that  does  not 
communicate  with  the  rest  of  a  village,  and  drown  the 
occupants  out  by  deluging  their  cul-de-sac.  A  couple 
of  days'  confinement  tames  them  so  thoroughly  that 
they  can  be  handled  with  impunity,  and  when  they 
are  let  loose  again  they  cannot  be  driven  from  the 
neighborhood  of  the  house,  but  burrow  somewhere 
about  the  foundation  or  under  the  doorstep,  coming 
at  a  whistle  to  be  fed  with  corn  as  fearlessly  as  a 
house-bred  puppy.  Though  called  dogs,  they  have  of 
course  no  right  to  the  name,  belonging  to  the  rodents, 


COMSTOCK'S.  — A  BUFFALO  HUNT.       47 

and  resembling  in  all  respects  the  Eastern  woodchuck 
more  closely  than  any  other  of  the  tribe  with  which 
we  are  familiar.  We  shall  find  them  repeatedly  here- 
after in  our  progress  to  the  Rocky  Mountains,  and 
have  occasion  to  speak  of  their  habits  in  various 
localities.  I  was  offered  a  very  pretty  and  well  tamed 
pair  of  them  at  a  station  two  hundred  miles  east  of 
Denver,  and  much  regretted  my  inability  to  close  the 
bargain  in  consequence  of  unwillingness  to  hamper 
myself  with  pets  all  the  way  to  California. 

We  found  the  Republican  a  clear  stream,  about  fif- 
teen rods  in  width  at  the  place  where  we  struck  it, — 
full  of  sandbars  and  quicksands,  with  treacherous 
banks  of  black  and  yellow  loam,  which  came  near  cast- 
ing our  horses  when  we  tried  to  ford.  We  managed, 
however,  to  get  across  without  "  sloughing  "  where 
the  water  was  only  a  little  above  our  hubs.  The 
southern  edge  of  the  stream  was  well  timbered  with 
fine  old  growths,  mainly  of  elm  and  cotton-wood,  un- 
der whose  shadow  we  made  our  camp,  and  picketed 
our  animals.  We  \yere  on  the  Sioux  hunting-ground ; 
and  although  our  numbers  and  armament  were  suf- 
ficiently formidable  to  warrant  us  presumably  against 
any  attack,  in  accordance  with  frontier  habits  we  dis- 
posed ourselves  between  the  river  and  our  large  wag- 
ons, and  stacked  our  guns  within  easy  reach. 

Here  the  Eastern  members  of  our  party  made  their 
first  acquaintance  with  an  animal  we  had  known  by 
reputation  since  the  earliest  days  devoted  to  the  peru- 
sal of  Mrs.  Trimmer.  The  gifted  beaver  had  left  his 
"sign"  on  every  tree  adjoining  the  bank.  If  a  work- 
man may  be  known  by  his  chips,  the  admiration  which 
we  felt  for  an  animal  hitherto  familiar  only  in  the  form 
of  old-school  hats,  was  thoroughly  well  grounded.  We 


48       THE  HEART  OF  THE  CONTINENT. 

saw  many  trunks  a  foot  in  diameter,  and  some  as  thick 
as  eighteen  inches,  gnawed  through  with  an  even 
bevel  all  round  the  girth,  as  neatly  as  an  experienced 
wood-chopper  could  have  cut  them  with  an  axe. 
Beside  the  trees,  which  the  next  strong  wind  or  an- 
other night's  felling-bee  of  the  beavers  would  tumble 
to  the  ground,  we  found  immense  numbers  of  logs, 
varying  from  the  full  length  of  the  trunk  to  three  feet, 
lying  near  the  severed  stumps,  awaiting  deportation 
to  some  projected  dam,  or  further  truncation  by  the 
tools  which  had  felled  them.  ,  A  neater  workshop  or 
nicer  work  than  this  on  the  bank  of  the  Kepublican 
never  existed  among  the  professors  of  any  handicraft. 
Where  the  logs  had  suffered  their  final  reduction,  they 
were  of  as  uniform  length  as  if  they  had  been  cut  by 
the  gauge,  and  their  conical  extremities  of  such  pol- 
ished smoothness  that  one  had  to  examine  closely 
before  perceiving  the  channels  made  by  the  ivory 
gauges  of  the  little  workmen.  With  true  human  dis- 
honesty, we  helped  ourselves  freely  from  their  wood- 
pile, and  in  a  few  moments  had  a  blazing  camp-fire 
and  a  kettle  singing  pleasant  prophecies  of  coffee. 

Before  the  water  boiled,  and  while  the  antelope  was 
dressing  for  dinner  (the  last  he  should  ever  be  inviteql 
to,  poor  little  fellow  ! )  a  few  of  us  strolled  out  beyond 
the  timber  with  our  field-glasses.  We  did  not  need 
them  to  discover  that  the  crown  of  the  whole  adjoin- 
ing bluff  was  alive  with  buffalo.  There  were  certainly 
quite  a  thousand  in  plain  sight ;  yet  these  were  only 
the  second  line  of  outposts,  —  the  first,  as  we  had 
seen,  having  already  been  pushed  across  the  river  as 
skirmishers.  Some  of  them  stood  on  the  brink  of  a 
clay  precipice,  fifty  or  sixty  feet  high,  surveying  the 
horizon,  but  without  any  apparent  emotion  in  view  of 


COMSTOCK'S.  —  A  BUFFALO  HUNT.        49 

our  presence,  while  the  farther  ones  cropped  their  way 
slowly  through  the  grass  without  raising  their  heads. 
Two  miles  of  plain  and  the  height  of  the  bluff  inter- 
vened between  us  and  them,  accounting  for  a  noncha- 
lance far  greater  than  that  of  any  other  absolutely 
wild  animal  I  am  acquainted  with.  A  herd  of  elk, 
deer,  or  antelope  would  have  tossed  up  their  heads 
and  been  away  down  the  wind  before  we  could  have 
snapped  our  fingers  at  them.  This  bovine  stolidity, 
as  we  shall  see  hereafter,  is  no  result  of  misplaced 
confidence  in  human  goodness,  but  a  well  based  faith 
in  the  most  admirable  strategic  arrangement  known 
to  the  gregarious  tribes  of  the  brute  world. 

My  first  experience  of  antelope-steak,  was  a  gastro- 
nomic sensation,  surpassing  all  the  luxuries  offered 
the  palate  by  civilized  bills  of  fare.  The  finest  veni- 
son, the  most  delicate  mountain  mutton,  afford  no 
just  comparison  for  it,  though  it  possesses  all  the 
game  flavor  of  the  one,  and  the  tenderness,  without 
the  inevitable  tallmvy  suggestion,  of  the  other.  Spring- 
chicken,  quail-breast,  or  frog's  hind  legs,  are  not  more 
delicate ;  and  there  is  a  flavor  in  the  juice  quite  in- 
describable, belonging  in  fact  to  the  idiosyncrasies 
and  monopolies  of  nature.  We  had  our  antelope 
cooked  in  several  modes :  steak  broiled  on  a  gridiron ; 
a  rib-roast,  made  by  spitting  the  meat  on  a  sharp 
stick  thrust  into  the  ground  before  the  fire ;  liver, 
as  exquisite  as  sweet-bread,  saute  with  a  few  scraps 
of  salt  pork ;  and  large  collops  fried  with  the  same 
relish  to  suit  the  hearty  appetite  of  our  frontiersmen. 
The  only  condiments  we  had  with  our  meat  were 
pepper,  salt,  and  a  can  of  the  Shaker  peaches,  brought 
from  our  own  party's  commissariat ;  nor  would  sauce 
of  any  piquant  kind  have  been  anything  but  an  un- 


50       THE  HEART  OF  THE  CONTINENT. 

warrantable  intrusion  on  the  inmost  Eleusinian  mys- 
teries of  gourmanderie.  But  I  can  imagine  Soyer 
looking  down  on  us  from  some  fifth  sphere  of  the 
world,  where  he  is  inventing  a  five  hundredth 
method  of  treating  ambrosia,  and  saying  with  tears 
of  still  human  regret,  "  Ah  !  I  died  too  soon  !  " 

After  dinner,  the  artist  opened  his  color-box,  and 
began  making  a  study  of  the  antelope's  head,  which 
had  been  left  entire  for  his  purpose,  while  the  two 
other  gentlemen  of  our  Overland  party,  accompanied 
by  John  Gilbert,  Ansell  Comstock,  Butler,  and  myself, 
shouldered  our  guns  and  started  for  the  bluff,  to  try 
stalking  buffalo  on  foot.  The  afternoon  was  very 
warm,  and  the  tramp  through  the  grass  of  the  river- 
bottom  by  no  means  easy ;  but  the  enthusiasm  of  a 
first  hunt  would  have  carried  our  neophytes  cheer- 
fully twice  as  far. 

We  made  our  way  to  a  precipitous  draw,  entering 
the  bluff  at  a  distance  of  three  miles  from  our  camp, 
and  halted  at  its  mouth  to  consider  our  course.  On 
all  the  commanding  prominences  of  the  divide  was 
stationed  a  giant  bull,  motionless,  as  if  carven  in 
bronze,  noting  our  every  gesture  with  red,  inevitable 
eyes.  We  determined  to  hide  in  the  cover  of  some 
low  scrubby  bushes,  and  wait  until  one  of  these  senti- 
nels came  down  from  his  post  to  drink  (the  only  cal- 
culable relaxation  of  his  vigilance)  at  a  neighboring 
puddle,  which  lay  stagnant  in  a  hollow  of  the  draw. 
Having  distributed  ourselves,  we  waited  with  held 
breath  for  nearly  an  hour.  The  sentinel  had  forgot- 
ten us,  we  thought,  for  he  began  moving  toward  our 
ambush  on  a  slow  stately  walk,  and  descended  the 
side  of  the  draw.  We  crept  along  behind  the  bushes 
on  our  hands  and  knees,  intending  to  flank  him,  and 


COMSTOCK'S.  —  A  BUFFALO  HUNT        51 

get  to  the  top  of  the  bluff  among  the  herd  without 
his  knowledge.  Just  as  we  came  abreast  of  the  pud- 
dle where  he  stood  irresolutely  snuffing,  with  an  evi- 
dent suspicion  weighing  on  his  crafty  mind,  we 
looked  upward  at  the  post  he  had  just  left,  and  there 
was  another  bull,  as  large  and  wary  as  the  sentry  off 
duty.  We  were  out-maneuvered,  after  all ;  and  in 
revenge  for  our  calloused  knee-pans,  I  regret  to  say 
that  we  poured  one  simultaneous  volley  into  the  buf- 
falo at  the  puddle.  But  even  an  old  bull-steak,  or 
the  juicy  hump  and  tongue,  which  were  the  only  val- 
uable part  of  him,  were  denied  us  by  an  excitement 
which  confused  our  aim.  Revenge  must  be  cool  to 
fire  straight.  As  it  was,  we  had  the  mortification  of 
seeing  him  lash  with  his  tail  such  inconsequential 
portions  of  his  surface  as  we  had  hit  at  the  shame- 
fully small  range  of  one  hundred  and  fifty  yards,  and 
without  apparent  inconvenience  shamble  away  on  a 
leisurely  cow-trot,  up  the  draw  toward  his  comrade. 

"  Cuss  his  tough  hide ! "  ejaculated  John  Gilbert. 
"  Why  didn't  we  shoot  for  him  in  the  first  place,  in- 
stead o'  trying  to  creep  round  ?  Then  we'd  a'  had  a 
good  tongue  for  supper  at  least.  Now  we  hain't  got 
nothin'." 

Some  one  suggested  that  we  had  intended  to  find 
better  game  in  the  herd,  —  if  we  had  got  there. 

"Uf- — that's  very  good  —  ef"  said  John  Gilbert. 
"Well,  —  we  didrit.  Now  I  don't  believe  in  throwin' 
away  a  chance  that's  clost  to  you,  for  a  maybe  ten 
mile  off.  It's  too  much  like  Thompson's  colt,  that 
swam  a  r^yvin  [ravine]  to  get  a  drink,  'cause  he'd 
allays  been  watered  on  t'other  side." 

Both  the  bulls  had  now  moved  out  of  sight,  leav- 
ing their  late  sentry-station  unoccupied.  We  con- 


52       THE  HEART  OF  THE  CONTINENT. 

eluded  to  move  up  the  draw  as  fast  as  possible,  and 
get  to  the  top  of  the  bluff  before  the  panic  had  be- 
come general  among  the  herd,  —  there  to  lie  down 
out  of  sight,  while  confidence  was  getting  restored, 
and  finally  to  creep  through  the  grass,  near  enough 
for  another  shot.  We  ran  up  the  draw  at  double 
quick,  bending  as  low  as  possible,  and  had  nearly 
reached  the  upper  debouchment,  when  a  turn  to  the 
right  uncovered  us  to  another  prominence,  and  there 
lowered  another  pair  of  vengeful  red  eyes,  burning 
out  of  a  shaggy  fell  of  hair !  We  dropped  down  in 
an  instant,  but  too  late.  With  a  leisurely  step,  the 
grim  old  vedette  retreated  in  good  order  on  the  main 
body. 

To  gratify  new  men,  whose  desire  to  see  and  cap- 
ture buffalo  was  greater  than  any  possible  belief  in 
human  experience,  our  frontiersmen,  telling  us  all  the 
while  that  it  was  useless,  assisted  us  for  three  hours 
in  twice  as  many  repetitions  of  this  maneuver.  We 
might  as  well  have  attempted  to  surprise  Grant  or 
Napoleon.  Our  failures  were  good  for  us ;  for  they 
taught  us  more  of  the  habits  of  the  buffalo  than  we 
could  have  learned  at  home  from  a  course  of  lec- 
tures, or  a  monograph  of  many  pages  devoted  to  that 
animal. 

Had  we  not  learned  it  with  our  own  eyes,  we 
never  could  have  regarded  a  true  statement  of  the 
case  as  anything  but  a  traveller's  tale,  and  would 
have  filed  it  alongside  of  stories  about  the  Gyascutus, 
or  the  pelican  feeding  her  young  with  blood  from 
her  own  breast. 

In  very  truth,  the  disposition  of  the  buffalo 
troops  is  not  surpassed  by  the  most  skillful  general's 
arrangement  of  his  forces.  On  the  moment  of  reach- 


COMSTOCK'S.  —  A  BUFFALO  HUNT.  53 

ing  a  new  feeding-ground,  they  fall  into  an  order  which 
seems  rather  the  result  of  masterly  strategy  and 
deep-laid  plan  than  any  unconscious  result  of  mere 
brute  instinct.  If,  as  is  the  case  at  the  season  when 
we  visited  them,  the  cows  are  running  with  newly 
dropped  calves,  the  sucklings  and  their  mothers  are 
placed  in  the  very  centre  of  the  herd.  Just  outside 
of  these  is  a  series  of  lines  occupied  by  the  weaned 
calves  and  yearlings.  The  next  concentric  layer  con- 
sists of  the  young  bulls,  able  to  fight  and  shift  pretty 
well  for  themselves,  but  not  yet  to  be  trusted  with 
state  secrets,  or  the  keys  of  a  defensive  position. 
Outside  of  these  come  the  veterans  of  the  corps, — 
venerable  bulls,  who  have  crossed  the  Arkansas  and 
the  Platte  many  successive  summers, — who  know  all 
the  good  feeding-grounds,  and  can  exercise  a  general 
direction  and  supervision  over  the  cows  and  the 
youngsters  on  the  march  for  their  first  or  second  time. 
These  form  the  advance  of  the  army  proper.  From 
their  ranks,  by  a  principle  of  natural  selection  as  un- 
erring as  Darwin's,  come  the  skirmishers,  who  recon- 
noitre for  the  advance,  and  the  pickets,  who  protect 
the  main  body.  For  both  these  functions,  the  very 
oldest  and  most  wary  bulls  are  chosen ;  but  even  here 
a  distinction  is  made  which  it  is  interesting  to  notice. 
I  repeatedly  found  maimed  and  invalid  bulls  among 
the  veterans  on  picket-duty,  but  never  once  among 
those  thrown  forward  as  skirmishers.  A  tacit  convic- 
tion seems  to  exist  among  the  buffaloes  that,  while 
age  and  experience  are  necessary  for  responsible  posts 
of  observation,  perfect  soundness  of  physique  must 
accompany  these  to  constitute  the  proper  pioneers  of 
a  campaign.  A  bull,  carrying  in  his  hip  the  ten-years' 
souvenir  of  an  ounce  ball,  or  an  arrow-head,  can  limp 


54  THE  HEART  OF  THE  CONTINENT. 

back  from  a  sentry-post,  a  mile  or  two  outside  the 
grazing  herd,  in  time  to  stampede  them  by  intelli- 
gence of  an  enemy;  but  nothing  short  of  perfect 
wind  and  limb  consists  with  the  duty  of  going  five  or 
ten  miles  ahead  of  a  corps,  to  scent  and  discover 
pasture.  I  have  noticed  their  arrangement  so  widely 
that  it  is  no  mere  theory  with  me,  arising  from  an  ad- 
miration which  insists  on  pushing  to  the  extreme  a 
parallel  between  human  and  bovine  sagacity. 

The  bulls  selected  for  sentry  duty  take  up  their 
position  on  all  the  prominences  of  the  divide,  leaving 
unoccupied,  as  we  discovered  on  the  day  referred  to, 
and  always  afterward,  not  a  single  point  from  which 
an  approaching  enemy  may  be  commanded.  The  buf- 
falo, widely  different  from  the  antelope,  depends 
scarcely  at  all  on  his  scent;  but  those  great  round 
eyes  of  his,  glowing  in  their  earnestness  or  anger,  like 
balls  of  fiery  asphaltum,  possess  a  length  of  range, 
and  an  inevitability  of  keenness,  scarcely  surpassed 
by  those  of  any  quadruped  running  wild  on  our  con- 
tinent. Crouch  and  crawl  where  you  may,  you  can- 
not enter  the  main  herd  without  half  a  dozen  pair  of 
them  successively,  or  at  a  time,  focusing  full  upon  you. 
Instant  retreat  of  their  owners  follows ;  at  first  no 
faster  than  a  majestic  walk,  but,  if  your  pursuit  be 
hot,  with  increasing  gradations  of  speed  up  to  the 
heavy  cow-gallop ;  and  then  comes  the  stampede  of 
the  late  quietly  feeding  herd,  in  a  cloud  of  dust,  and 
with  a  noise  of  thunder,  like  a  general  engagement. 

I  have  said  it  is  impossible  to  get  by  the  sentries ; 
but  there  is  an  exception  for  the  case  of  a  hunter, 
who,  disguised  in  a  wolf  or  antelope  skin,  is  willing 
to  crawl  slowly,  dragging  a  rifle,  for  two  or  three 
miles ;  or  the  still  rarer  case  of  one  who,  lying  down 


COMSTOCK'S.— A  BUFFALO  HUNT.  55 

completely  out  of  sight  in  the  grass,  wriggles  him- 
self painfully  along,  like  a  snake,  till  he  gets  within 
range. 

Being  somewhat  of  an  enthusiast  in  hunting  as  well 
as  everything  else,  and  having  no  animal  disguises  at 
hand  to  aid  me  in  the  former  method,  I  resolved,  after 
our  repeated  failures  recorded  above,  to  try  the  latter 
manner  of  approach.  Nobody  cared  to  join  me.  The 
rest  of  the  party  went  around  the  foot  of  the  bluff  to 
watch  the  success  of  Hunger,  who  had  just  come  from 
the  camp  on  horseback,  and  was  charging  with  carbine 
slung  and  revolver  drawn,  up  another  draw  about  a 
mile  to  the  north  of  our  first  advance.  I  stayed  on 
top  of  the  divide,  and,  lying  down  close  to  the  grass- 
roots, began  to  work  myself  toward  the  herd. 

I  kept  my  secret  so  well  that  a  coyote  passed  only 
a  little  over  pistol-shot  from  me  before  he  suspected 
danger.  I  crawled  and  rested  at  intervals  for  more 
than  an  hour,  the  herd  getting  all  the  time  in  plainer 
sight,  until  finally  my  patience  became  exhausted, 
and  several  buffalo  wandered  as  near  me  as  four 
hundred  yards.  My  rifle  was  the  Ballard  ( a  weapon 
of  whose  excellence  I  shall  hereafter  have  occasion  to 
speak  more  at  large),  and  put.  up  for  five  hundred 
yards,  though  I  have  killed  an  antelope  with  it  at  six 
hundred.  I  was  sure  I  might  rely  on  it  at  my  present 
distance,  if  the  buffalo-fever  could  only  be  held  in 
check.  I  took  deliberate  aim,  and  succeeded  in  hitting 
a  fine  bull,  though  the  ball  went  too  low  for  his  final 
settlement,  and  he  walked  away  laboriously  to  lie 
down  where  I  could  not  follow  him.  Just  at  that  mo- 
ment a  pair  of  rifles  spoke  in  quick  succession  lower 
down  the  bluff.  Two  old  bulls  on  the  edge  of  the 
herd  gave  as  many  jumps,  and  began  lashing  their 


56       THE  HEART  OF  THE  CONTINENT. 

sides  and  shaking  their  heads  after  a  most  expressive 
manner.  They  had  evidently  been  made  to  tingle 
somewhere,  but  were  only  provoked.  For  a  moment 
they  stood  confronting  each  other,  and  considering 
themselves  for  the  probable  cause  of  the  disturbance. 
Then  the  idea  seemed  to  strike  each  simultaneously 
that  the  other  had  in  some  mysterious  manner  com- 
mitted the  insult,  and  forthwith  they  rushed  headlong 
against  each  other's  adamant  skulls  with  a  shock  which 
might  have  caved  in  an  ordinary  brick  house.  Then 
they  locked  horns,  and  pushed  with  such  strength  as 
nearly  to  lift  each  other  on  their  hind  legs ;  then  they 
tossed  each  other's  heads  sideways,  broke  hold,  tram- 
pled the  ground  savagely,  and  joined  their  heads  with 
another  crash  in  desperate  tourney.  Another  pair  of 
shots  broke  up  the  comical  misunderstanding,  and  set 
the  whole  detachment  stampeding  out  of  sight,  after 
which  I  picked  myself  up  a  much  more  fatigued  but 
decidedly  a  wiser  man  on  the  subject  of  penetrating 
herds,  and  joined  my  comrades  just  at  the  foot  of  the 
bluff,  to  find  Hunger  and  a  gentleman  of  our  Over- 
land party  responsible  for  the  practical  joke  on  the 
old  bulls,  at  whose  memory  we  were  still  laughing. 

It  was  long  after  sunset  when  we  got  back  to  camp. 
Our  artist  had  made  two  or  three  studies  of  game  and 
horses  while  we  were  "wasting  our  time"  (as  people 
always  say  to  hunters  who  return  light,  though  I 
notice  that  a  nice  pair  of  grouse  or  saddle  of  venison 
greatly  dignifies  the  pastime);  George  Comstock  had 
the  remainder  of  the  antelope  cooking  at  a  glorious 
fire,  supplied  as  usual  from  the  beavers'  wood-pile ; 
and  the  aroma  of  our  condensed  coffee,  just  prepared 
by  turning  a  gallon  of  water  into  a  pint  of  paste,  gave 
the  wild  pure  air  of  the  Plains  a  strangely  incongru- 
ous but  delicious  flavor  of  civilization. 


COMSTOCK'S.-A  BUFFALO  HUNT.  57 

After  finishing  our  meal,  we  spread  our  blankets 
for  the  night,  and  lay  down  upon  them  to  smoke 
and  talk  away  that  nice  mezzotint  hour  which  in 
camp  shades  away  from  supper  to  bed- time.  From 
the  "  Noctes  Ambrosianse  "  down  to  the  last  book  on 
the  Adirondacks,  Literature  delights  to  dwell  on  such 
occasions.  The  romance  and  poetry,  the  wit  and 
wisdom,  of  the  camp-fire  belong  to  a  specialty  as 
individual  and  charming  as  Bos  well's  Johnson  and  the 
gossip  of  Leigh  Hunt.  I  wish  I  could  believe  myself 
adequate  to  the  analyzing  of  our  camp  palaver ;  for  it 
was  so  racy  that  no  tyro  can  hope  to  do  it  the  least 
justice,  and  even  an  old  hand  might  shrink  from  at- 
tempting to  redraw  the  most  original  of  frontier  orig- 
inalities. 

The  magical  beauty  and  the  strange  suggestions  of 
our  place  and  time  seemed  to  open  every  heart,  infuse 
some  genius  into  every  mind.  He  must  have  had  a 
vulgar  nature  indeed  who  could  not  be  caught  up  into 
one  short  inspiration  by  the  mere  reflection  upon 
where  we  were.  Half  a  score  of  white  men  all  alone 
in  the  heart  of  the  virgin  continent ;  some  far  Sioux 
camp  and  the  vast  cohorts  of  the  buffalo  our  nearest 
neighbors  in  place  or  sympathy.  Above  us  was  the 
great,  pure  dome  of  a  heaven  so  free  from  all  taint  of 
earthly  smoke  that  the  stars  seemed  to  have  been  let 
down  like  cressets  leagues  closer  to  our  heads  than  in 
the  city,  and  burned  in  diamond  points  without  veil 
or  trembling.  The  air  was  of  that  strange  sweetness 
which,  having  no  scent  and  being  absolutely  limpid, 
is  still  called  spicy  and  balmy  by  hyperbole  straining 
vainly  for  an  adequate  name.  Our  fire  leaped  up 
gladly,  as  if  it  tasted  the  young  original  oxygen  with 
our  own  human  relish ;  and  across  its  faint,  vanishing 


58       THE  HEART  OF  THE  CONTINENT. 

edges  came  spectral  glimpses  of  shivering  trees  along 
a  distant  bend  of  the  Republican ;  while  boldly  beyond 
the  flame,  the  purple-black  bluffs  rose  against  the  clear 
dark  sky,  their  promontories  merged  by  night  into  one 
long  wall  of  shadow.  Nothing  broke  the  silence  save 
now  and  then  the  yelp  of  a  coyote,  a  night-bird's 
scream,  our  own  subdued  voices,  and  the  lulling  gur- 
gle of  the  river  at  our  feet,  on  its  way  over  dusky 
sand-bars  to  carry  the  message  of  the  Rocky  Mountain 
snows  to  the  soft  current  of  the  Gulf  and  the  mad 
waves  of  the  Atlantic.  We  lay  half-way  between  great 
mysteries,  —  in  the  lap  of  a  loneliness  as  profound  as 
the  caves  of  the  Nereids. 

But  this  loneliness  mellowed  instead  of  oppressing 
the  quaint  Western  minds  which  were  around  us  in  the 
firelight.  Some  trifling  remark  about  the  hunt  led  to 
a  queer  idiomatic  answer ;  we  began  to  laugh,  and  the 
fire  of  humor  was  straightway  kindled  to  such  a  height 
that  yarn  after  yarn,  joke  on  joke,  surprised  the  solemn 
dignity  of  nature.  The  simplest  saying  of  any  man 
who  has  lived  like  these  pioneers  much  away  from  his 
kind  takes  the  form  of  an  aphorism.  He  has  not  been 
where  he  could  give  away  the  sap  of  his  reflections 
before  it  crystallized ;  he  has  not  emptied  his  brains  in 
loose  small-talk;  he  has  much  bethought  himself, — 
boiled  himself  down ;  and  when  he  speaks,  be  sure 
that  it  is  "  sugaring-off "  time.  I  fancy  the  amount 
of  thought  is  much  the  same  in  all  men  of  quick  intel- 
lects; they  differ  mostly  in  quality  of  thought  and 
in  the  measure  of  its  condensation.  There  is  less  dif- 
ference between  the  Yankee  mountaineer  and  the 
Western  plainsman  than  their  local  varieties  of  scene 
and  habit  would  lead  one  to  expect.  The  terseness 
and  epigrammatic  smack  of  both  comes  from  isola- 
tion, and  their  talk  has  many  resemblances. 


COMSTOCK'S.—  A  BUFFALO  HUNT.  59 

Ansell  Comstock  was  lamenting  the  loss  of  his 
lariat.  Butler  saw  it  lying  on  the  ground  beside  him, 
and  called  his  attention  to  the  fact  by  the  figurative 
utterance,  "If  it  were  a  snake,  it  would  bite  you." 
Before  I  left,  I  had  heard  Ansell  reproving  one  of  the 
children  for  a  greasy  face,  by  asking  him  if  he  wasn't 
ashamed  to  sprain  all  the  flies'  legs  that  lit  on  him. 
Metaphors  like  these  were  common  speech  at  the 
Comstocks'. 

Some  of  the  best  stories  and  bonmots  told  by  our 
frontiersmen  had  reference  to  "Old  Trotter,"  an  ec- 
centric genius  who  drives  on  the  first  stage  out  of 
Fort  Kearney  westward,  and  whose  deeds  and  sayings 
will  in  future  time  become  as  historical  as  those  of 
Tom  Quick  in  Sullivan  County,  New  York  State,  Jim 
Beckworth  in  Colorado,  or  any  other  original  elevated 
by  pioneer  tradition  among  its  demigods.  Trotter 
improved  on  the  old  yarn  to  the  effect  "The  weather 
would  have  been  colder  if  the  thermometer  had  been 
longer,"  by  saying  that  he  had  been  where  it  was  "so 
cold  that  the  thermometer  got  down  off  the  nail." 
He  once  stopped  his  stage,  and  steadily  gazed  into  the 
sky  until  all  the  passengers  alighted  and  began  gaz- 
ing with  him.  Somebody  said,  "What's  the  matter, 
driver?  what  are  you  looking  at?"  —  "Can  you  see 
the  comet  ?  "  rejoined  Trotter,  earnestly.  Again  for  a 
space  everybody  made  thorough  search  through  the 
heavens.  Finally  the  most  impatient  passenger  an- 
swered, "  No !  I  can't !  Where  is  it  ?  "  The  rest  as- 
sented to  him,  upon  which  Trotter  very  quietly  said, 
"Wall,  if  none  of  us  can  find  it,  I  don't  believe 
there's  any  there,  —  so  s'pose  we  g'lang."  On  one 
occasion,  Trotter  took  a  vacation  and  came  down  to 
Atchison  for  the  purpose  of  recreating  in  that  gilded 


60       THE  HEART  OF  THE  CONTINENT. 

capital,  and  beholding  the  gay  world  of  fashion  as 
displayed  upon  its  costly  Boulevards.  It  was  imme- 
diately after  pay-day,  and  Trotter  was  flush.  After 
casting  about  for  some  method  accordant  with  his 
original  turn  of  mind  by  which  his  earnings  might  be 
dissipated  with  the  highest  degree  of  voluptuary  sat- 
isfaction, he  discovered  that  a  band  of  minstrels  was 
about  to  delight  Atchison  with  a  concert.  He  imme- 
diately went  to  the  treasurer  of  the  company,  pre- 
vailed upon  him  to  limit  his  number  of  tickets,  and, 
forestalling  the  market,  bought  up  every  one  of  them 
himself.  Having  thus  effected  what  the  brokers  would 
call  "  a  corner  "  in  the  world  of  amusement,  he  repaired 
to  the  hall  at  the  hour  of  performance,  occupied  a  seat 
in  the  centre,  and  had  the  entire  concert  to  himself. 
Having  thus  experienced  the  sensation  of  solitary 
grandeur  usually  confined  to  kings  and  high  digni- 
taries, he  expressed  himself  fully  satisfied  with  his 
money's  worth,  and  the  next  morning  departed  for 
Fort  Kearney,  to  drive  until  next  pay  day  without  a 
penny  in  his  pocket. 

By  far  the  most  entertaining  practical  joke  told  of 
him  (for  the  above  has  rather  the  complexion  of  a 
luxurious  solemnity)  is  his  stopping  a  man  on  the 
road  who  drove  a  miserable  team  of  sick  and  aged 
little  mules,  with  the  ejaculation,  "  Look  a'here,  pil- 
grim !  I  know  a  man  that  would  give  eight  hundred 
dollars  if  he  could  only  see  them  mules  !  "  "  Why!  " 
exclaimed  the  man,  startled  by  such  an  unexpected 
prospect  of  luck,  "  Yeou  da-on't  say  so  !  Who  is  he  ?  " 
"  He  8  a  blind  man, "  said  Trotter ;  "  g'lang !  " 

With  such  stories  as  these,  and  many  others  belong- 
ing to  that  category  of  which  a  well  known  bel  esprit 
once  said  to  me,  "  0,  if  one  could  only  print  the  good 


COMSTOCK'S.  — A  BUFFALO  HUNT.        61 

things  which  mustn't  be  printed,  what  a  book  that 
would  be  !  "  our  frontiersmen  kept  us  lively  until  the 
fire  burned  down  to  coals,  and  we  felt  ready  to  wrap 
ourselves  in  our  blankets. 

The  next  five  minutes,  and  we  were  as  sound  asleep 
in  that  divine  bed-chamber  of  all-out-doors  as  any 
baby  that  ever  lay  in  its  cradle,  ignorant  of  human 
woe.  0  the  change  from  the  lately  abandoned 
vigils  and  labors  of  long  city  nights,  —  from  the 
three-o'clock  retirings,  the  nervous  tossings,  the  un- 
solved problems  that  write  themselves  on  the  bed- 
curtain  of  him  who  lies  down  without  any  extinction 
of  his  business  impetus,  or  cooling  of  life's  competi- 
tive fever  !  It  was  a  return  to  childhood  ;  and  the 
mother  nature  stroked  our  foreheads  into  slumber 
with  a  hand  of  soft  sweet  air,  the  moment  that  we 
touched  our  rugged  pillows.  Years  had  blotted  out 
the  memory  of  true  sleep  from  us :  now  it  returned 
as  a  new  sensation. 

"With  the  earliest  rays  of  spring  sunshine  we  were 
on  our  feet  again,  and  but  a  little  later  saw  us  as  deep 
as  we  could  get  in  the  clear,  bracing  water  of  the  Re- 
publican. Thoroughly  refreshed,  we  made  our  break- 
fast off  our  own  stores, — supper  having  dismissed  the 
antelope,  —  and  prepared  for  the  grand  foray  against 
the  buffalo  herd,  of  which  yesterday  had  been  only  the 
burlesque  ;  to  which,  indeed,  yesterday  was  related 
in  much  the  same  sort  of  way  as  Mrs.  Trimmer  and 
natural  history  apprenticeships  in  general  are  re- 
lated to  actual  experience  of  lions. 

The  two  horses  which  had  been  attached  to  Mun- 
ger's  buggy  were  both  of  them  well  trained  hunters 
of  our  present  game.  They  were  accordingly  put 
under  saddle,  —  Hunger  retaining  the  chestnut,  a 


62        THE  HEART  OF  THE  CONTINENT. 

fine  animal  named  Ben  Holladay,  after  the  Overland 
Stage  proprietor,  and  giving  me  "  Nig,"  an  excellent 
black  horse,  whose  pluck  and  endurance  I  afterwards 
thoroughly  tested.  I  owed  this  kindness  partly  to 
the  fact  that  in  my  own  private  capacity  I  was  very 
anxious  for  one  good  hunt  on  a  horse  that  knew  buf- 
falo, but  mainly  to  Hunger's  willingness  to  do  a 
"  courtesy  to  the  Press,"  whereof,  before  leaving  New 
York,  I  was  a  member.  It  both  amused  and  gratified 
me  to  see  the  influence  and  interest  of  journalism 
extending  so  far  beyond  the  reach  of  latest  editions. 
No  higher  compliment  could  have  been  paid  the 
profession.  The  last  time  I  had  used  my  press  priv- 
ilege was  in  going  to  my  parquet  stall  in  the  Acad- 
emy of  Music,  past  a  smiling  door-keeper,  who  took 
tickets  of  other  people.  Here  I  vaulted  to  the 
saddle  of  one  of  the  best  hunters  in  the  American 
wilderness,  from  the  same  professional  spring-board ; 
and  the  two  courtesies  were  but  three  weeks  apart. 

Our  artist,  though  a  good  shot,  and  capable  of 
going  to  market  for  himself  wherever  there  was  any 
game,  as  well  as  most  people,  had  seen  enough  buf- 
falo-hunting in  other  expeditions  to  care  little  for  it 
now,  compared  with  the  artistic  opportunities  which 
our  battue  afforded  him  for  portraits  of  fine  old  bulls. 
He  accordingly  put  his  color-box,  camp-stool,  and 
sketching-umbrella  into  the  buggy,  hitched  a  team 
of  the  wagon-horses  to  it,  and,  taking  one  of  our  own 
party  in  with  him,  declared  his  intention  of  visiting 
the  battle-field  solely  as  "  our  special  artist."  Thomp- 
son and  John  Gilbert  accompanied  us  on  their  own 
horses.  The  rest  stayed  behind  to  watch  camp. 

Fully  recovered  from  the  stampede  of  yesterday, 
the  outer  bulls  of  the  herd,  guarded  by  their  sentinels, 


COMSTOCK'S.  —  A  BUFFALO   HUNT.  63 

were  grazing  in  plain  sight  along  the  top  of  the  bluff 
It  was  arranged  that  our  four  mounted  men  should 
lead  in  open  order  toward  the  foot  of  the  bluff  upon 
a  quiet  walk,  and  the  moment  the  sentry  bulls  walked 
away  to  give  the  alarm,  charge  up  the  nearest  practi- 
cable gulch  that  entered  the  bluff,  getting  to  the  top 
as  quickly  as  possible.  There  each  of  us  was  to 
select  his  own  bull  out  of  the  herd,  and  ride  him 
down  till  he  got  within  easy  range.  The  buggy  was 
to  keep  as  close  on  our  rear  as  it  was  able. 

Following  this  arrangement,  we  marched  out  from 
the  shadow  of  the  cotton-woods,  and  began  pushing 
slowly  through  the  grass  toward  our  game.  The 
sentries  focused  all  their  eyes  on  us  before  we  had 
gone  a  quarter  of  a  mile  from  cover,  but  did  not 
think  us  worth  solicitude  until  we  were  a  hundred 
and  fifty  rods  closer.  Then  they  began  to  paw  un- 
easily, lash  their  sides,  and  stretch  their  necks  with 
unequivocal  earnestness.  The  buggy  still  kept  right 
behind  us,  and  we  walked  our  horses  about  fifty  feet 
apart.  We  were  a  quarter  of  a  mile  from  the  foot  of 
the  bluff,  when  the  first  bull  in  front  of  us  walked 
majestically  away.  A  few  rods  further  on,  and  all 
the  sentries  began  a  dignified  leave-taking.  "  Now ! " 
cried  Hunger,  and  the  four  horsemen  spurred  at  once. 
We  all  took  the  same  ravine,  and  scrambled  up  its 
sides  (steeper  than  any  hill  where  I  had  ever  seen 
a  horse  pushed  before)  in  hardly  more  time  than  I 
have  taken  to  write  the  fact.  We  gained  the  top  of 
the  bluff  just  before  the  sentries  had  reached  their 
lines.  The  herd  itself  was  not  stampeded  until  we 
came  in  sight  of  its  front.  In  an  instant  some  un- 
countable hundreds  of  black,  shaggy  monsters  threw 
their  heads  into  the  air  with  a  force  which  lifted  them 


64  THE  HEART  OF  THE   CONTINENT. 

on  their  hind  hoofs,  and,  making  these  last  pivotal, 
whirled  about,  as  John  said,  "  Like  as  if  they  had 
springs  in  'em."  Then,  with  a  ponderous  trot,  the 
whole  line  was  away.  We  were  about  two  hundred 
and  fifty  yards  from  them  when  the  stampede  became 
general. 

This  was  altogether  too  far  for  effective  shooting 
from  the  saddle,  except  for  an  Indian,  or  some  ex- 
ceptional white  man  who  had  spent  his  life  with  the 
herds;  and  even  such  ride  as  close  as  possible  before 
using  bow  or  rifle.  So  we  again  clapped  spurs  to  our 
horses,  and  hammered  on  toward  our  game,  just  as 
the  buggy  succeeded  in  climbing  the  bluff. 
i  The  buffalo  heard  us,  and  quickened  their  flight 
to  that  clumsy  cow-gallop  of  which  I  have  before 
spoken.  In  a  few  minutes  we  were  putting  them  to 
their  trumps.  They  continued  to  lead  our  horses  for 
a  mile,  running  quite  at  the  rate  of  ten  miles  an 
hour.  But  our  animals  had  not  yet  "got  their  wind;" 
and  so  long  as  the  bulls  kept  on  tolerably  even  ground 
where  we  could  follow  them,  every  minute  brought  us 
fresh  advantage.  If  they  reached  the  jaws  of  some 
unexpected  draw,  they  would  plunge  thirty  feet  down 
its  almost  perpendicular  sides  with  as  little  hesitation 
as  we  would  leap  a  ditch ;  but  no  such  ill  luck  befell 
us.  They  showed  signs  of  distress  in  about  five  min- 
utes from  the  first  burst,  and  blew  hard,  though  there 
was  no  diminution  in  their  speed,  while  our  animals 
were  warming  into  their  work  splendidly. 

I  selected  the  bull  nearest  me,  each  of  the  other 
horsemen  picked  his  quarry,  and  for  ten  minutes 
more  I  knew  nothing,  in  the  heat  of  my  first  buffalo 
fever,  but  streaming  wind,  a  great  oscillating  patch 
of  hair  and  hide  beyond  me,  and  a  sound  of  tram- 


COMSTOCK'S.—  A  BUFFALO  HUNT.  65 

pling  like  steady  thunder.  My  horse  was  crazy  with 
enthusiasm.  He  snorted  as  he  ran,  and  his  eyes 
bulged  full  of  fire.  I  had  got  within  a  distance  of 
my  game  where  I  should  have  been  ashamed  to  miss 
a  hai>crown  at  standing  fire.  I  whirled  my  carbine 
round  from  my  back,  and  dropping  the  reins  let 
drive  for  the  back  of  the  foreshoulder.  Good  inten- 
tion !  The  slug  went  harmlessly  far  over  my  old 
monster's  neck,  as  the  plunge  of  my  horse  threw  the 
muzzle  into  the  air.  I  was  disgusted  with  the  world, 
but  sought  to  retrieve  myself  by  one  more  effort. 
My  breech-loading  Ballard,  the  best  arm  for  sport  of 
all  kinds  that  is  made  on  the  continent,  had  another 
cartridge  in  it  within  ten  seconds.  I  was  still  within 
fifty  yards  of  my  buffalo,  and  again  I  fired.  This  time, 
in  spite  of  my  greenness  at  shooting  on  the  gallop,  I 
put  a  ball  home,  but  not  in  the  right  place.  It  struck 
too  low  in  the  flank,  and  just  bled  the  buffalo  without 
stopping  him.  A  third  time  I  fired,  and  without  any 
more  valuable  effect.  The  one  or  two  places  in  which 
an  ounce  ball  will  stop  a  buffalo-bull,  bear  a  charmed 
life  to  the  tyro  in  saddle-shooting.  My  horse  began 
to  be  fearfully  winded,  —  this  was  his  first  time  out 
during  the  season ;  he  was  a  generous  loan ;  and 
though  the  buffalo  was  rapidly  tiring,  I  desisted  from 
the  chase  in  a  state  of  dissatisfaction  with  myself 
only  commensurate  with  my  previous  enthusiasm. 

As  I  sat,  the  Knight  of  the  Kueful  Countenance 
translated  to  Kansas  (I  omitted  to  say  that  our  ride 
from  Comstock's  had  once  more  taken  us  out  of  Ne- 
braska), Thompson  rode  up,  and  invited  me  to  go  and 
look  at  his  success.  Well,  I  never  wished  to  be  mean ; 
it  was  pleasant  to  see  somebody's  success;  and  I  ac- 
cordingly rode  with  him  a  mile  away,  to  find  a  mag- 


66       THE  HEART  OF  THE  CONTINENT. 

nificent  bull  stretched  dead  as  a  smelt  on  a  high 
grassy  knoll  where  he  had  fallen  with  one  unerring 
shot,  right  through  the  heart.  Through  the  right 
portion  of  the  heart,  it  is  necessary  to  add ;  for  I  felt 
a  little  less  ashamed  of  myself  on  learning  that  a 
buffalo  will  travel,  and  get  clear  of  capture,  with  a 
slug  through  the  apex  of  that  organ,  nothing  short 
of  disturbing  its  valvular  arrangement  having  the 
immediate  effect  to  bring  him  down.  For  the  first 
time  I  came  close  enough  to  a  wild  native  buffalo  to 
examine  him  minutely,  and  was  obliged  to  confess 
that  he  was  one  of  the  noblest  specimens  of  the  brute 
creation.  Upright,  the  hump  of  this  bull  must  have 
stood  over  five  feet  high.  It  was  the  hair-shedding 
season,  and  all  abaft  the  hump  his  body  was  as  bare, 
save  in  two  or  three  isolated  patches  of  frowzy,  faded 
wool,  as  a  Chinese  dog.  This  fact  was  advantageous 
to  the  examination  of  his  anatomy ;  and  though  he 
carried  a  head  and  chest  only  less  ponderous  than  a 
young  elephant's,  I  found  a  beautiful  shapeliness  of 
curve  about  his  haunches,  a  cleanness  of  line,  and 
even  slenderness  in  his  hind  legs,  that  looked  rather 
like  a  member  of  the  deer  or  elk  family  than  any  of 
the  bovine  tribes. 

I  stood  admiring  him  and  felicitating  Thompson, 
when  Hunger  appeared  upon  a  distant  divide,  beck- 
oning me  to  him.  I  left  the  dead  bull,  and  rode  to 
ask  what  was  wanted.  When  I  got  within  ear-shot, 
Hunger  hollowed  his  hand  before  his  mouth  and 
roared,  "  Bring  along  your  painter."  Glad  to  be  of 
more  use  to  somebody  than  I  had  been  to  myself,  I 
set  out  in  search  of  the  buggy.  About  a  mile  away, 
I  found  it  rolling  placidly  along  through  the  grass, 
after  the  well-meaning  but  veteran  wagon-team.  I 


COMSTOCK'S.  —  A  BUFFALO  HUNT.       67 

told  our  artist  that  Hunger  had  something  for  him. 
At  the  news  the  buggy  axles  creaked  joyfully ;  the 
little  old  horses  sprang  forward  on  a  gallop,  with  all 
the  recalled  freshness  of  their  youth ;  and  in  some- 
thing less  than  a  quarter  of  an  hour,  we  stood,  or  sat, 
beside  Hunger  and  the  champing  Ben  Holladay. 

That  makes  two  :  there  were  three  of  his  company. 
He  had  ridden  upon  as  big  a  bull  as  ever  ran  the 
Plains,  stopped  him  with  a  series  of  shots  from  a 
Colt's  army  revolver,  and  was  holding  him  at  bay  in  a 
grassy  basin,  for  our  artist's  especial  behoof.  He,  on 
his  part,  did  not  need  three  words  to  show  him  his 
opportunity.  He  leapt  from  the  buggy;  out  came 
the  materials  of  success  following  him,  and  in  a  trifle 
over  three  minutes  from  his  first  halt,  the  big  blue 
umbrella  was  pointed  and  pitched,  and  he  sat  under 
it  on  his  camp-stool,  with  his  color-box  on  his  knees, 
his  brush  and  palette  in  hand,  and  a  clean  board 
pinned  in  the  cover  of  his  color-box. 

Hunger's  old  giant  glowered  and  flashed  fire  from 
two  great  wells  of  angry  brown  and  red,  burning  up 
like  a  pair  of  lighted  naphtha-springs,  through  a  foot- 
deep  environment  of  shaggy  hair.  The  old  fellow 
had  been  shot  in  half  a  dozen  places.  He  was 
wounded  in  the  haunch,  through  the  lower  ribs, 
through  the  lungs,  and  elsewhere.  Still  he  stood 
his  ground  like  a  Spartacus.  He  was  too  much  dis- 
tressed to  run  with  the  herd;  at  every  plunge  he 
was  easily  headed  off  by  a  turn  of  Hunger's  bridle; 
he  had  trampled  a  circle  of  twenty  feet  diameter, 
in  his  sallies  to  get  away,  yet  he  would  not  lie 
down.  From  both  his  nostrils  the  blood  was  flowing, 
mixed  with  glare  and  foam.  His  breath  was  like  a 
blacksmith's  bellows.  His  great  sides  heaved  labori- 


68        THE  HEART  OF  THE  CONTINENT. 

ously,  as  if  he  were  breathing  with  his  whole  body. 
I  never  could  be  enough  of  a  hunter  not  to  regard 
this  as  a  distressing  sight.  Yet  I  could  understand 
how  Parrhasius  might  have  been  driven  by  the  devil 
of  his  genius  to  do  the  deed  of  horror  and  power 
which  has  come  down  to  us  through  the  centuries.  I 
seemed  to  see  Prometheus  on  his  rock,  defying  the 
gods.  Kill  a  deer,  and  he  pleads  with  you  out  of  his 
wet,  dying  eye ;  a  bear  falls  headlong  with  a  grunt, 
and  gives  up  his  stolid  ghost  without  more  ado,  if 
the  bullet  is  mortal ;  but  here  was  a  monster  whose 
body  contained  at  least  four  deathly  bullets,  yet  who 
stood  as  unflinching  as  adamant,  with  his  face  to  the 
foe.  It  was  the  first  tune  I  had  seen  moral  grandeur 
in  a  brute. 

Hunger,  Thompson,  and  I  rode  slowly  round  the 
bull,  attracting  his  attention  by  feigned  assaults,  that 
our  artist  might  see  him  in  action.  As  each  of  us 
came  to  a  point  where  the  artist  saw  him  sideways, 
the  rider  advanced  his  horse,  and  menaced  the  bull 
with  his  weapon.  The  old  giant  lowered  his  head  till 
his  great  beard  swept  the  dust ;  out  of  his  immense 
fell  of  hair  his  eyes  glared  fiercer  and  redder;  he 
drew  hi  his  breath  with  a  hollow  roar  and  a  painful 
hiss,  and  charged  madly  at  the  aggressor.  A  mere 
twist  of  the  rein  threw  the  splendidly  trained  horse 
out  of  harm's  way,  and  the  bull  almost  went  headlong 
with  his  unspent  impetus.  For  nearly  fifteen  min- 
utes, this  process  was  continued,  while  the  artist's 
hand  and  eye  followed  each  other  at  the  double-quick 
over  the  board.  The  signs  of  exhaustion  increased 
with  every  charge  of  the  bull ;  the  blood  streamed 
faster  from  wounds  and  nostrils ;  yet  he  showed  no 
signs  of  surrender,  and  an  almost  human  devil  of  im- 


COMSTOCK'S.  —  A  BUFFALO  HUNT.        69 

potent  revenge  looked  out  of  his  fiery,  unblinking 
eyeballs. 

But  our  Parrhasius  was  merciful.  As  soon  as  he 
had  transferred  the  splendid  action  of  the  buffalo  to 
his  study,  he  called  on  us  to  put  an  end  to  the  dis- 
tress, which,  for  aught  else  than  art's  sake,  was  terri- 
ble to  see.  All  of  us  who  had  weapons  drew  up  in 
line,  while  the  artist  attracted  the  bull's  attention  by 
a  final  feigned  assault.  We  aimed  right  for  the  heart, 
and  fired.  A  hat  might  have  covered  the  chasm 
which  poured  blood  from  his  side  when  our  smoke 
blew  away.  All  the  balls  had  sped  home ;  but  the 
unconquerable  would  not  fall  with  his  side  to  the  foe. 
He  turned  himself  painfully  around  on  his  quivering 
legs ;  he  stiffened  his  tail  in  one  last  fury ;  he  shook 
his  mighty  head,  and  then,  lowering  it  to  the  ground, 
concentrated  all  the  life  that  lasted  in  him  for  a  mad 
onset.  He  rushed  forward  at  his  persecutors  with  all 
the  elan  of  his  first  charges ;  but  strength  failed  him 
half  way.  Ten  feet  from  where  we  stood,  he  tumbled 
to  his  knees,  made  heroic  efforts  to  rise  again,  and 
came  up  on  one  leg ;  but  the  death-tremor  possessed 
the  other,  and  with  a  great  panting  groan,  in  which 
all  of  brute  power  and  beauty  went  forth  at  once,  he 
fell  prone  on  the  trampled  turf,  and  a  glaze  hid  the 
anger  of  his  eyes.  Even  in  death  those  eyes  were 
wide  open  on  the  foe,  as  he  lay  grand,  like  Caasar  be-* 
fore  Pompey's  statue,  at  the  feet  of  his  assassins. 

We  then  returned  to  Thompson's  bull,  where  our 
artist  sat  down  to  make  another  study,  leaving  the 
buggy  to  return  to  camp  and  send  out  a  wagon  for 
our  meat,  and  ourselves  to  set  forth  in  search  of  new 
adventures. 

One  of  Thompson's  intensest  yearnings  was  to  get 


70       THE  HEART  OF  THE  CONTINENT. 

some  cow-meat.  This  laudable  desire  had  been  frus- 
trated in  all  the  hunts  he  had  joined  since  the  buffalo 
left  the  Arkansas  this  season.  He  liked  hump  and 
tongue  very  well,  but  naturally  preferred  game  which 
he  could  use  more  economically  than  simply  to  cut 
out  these,  and  leave  the  carcass.  So  he  proposed  a 
flank  movement,  by  which  we  might  get  nearer  to 
the  herd. 

Hunger  had  an  equal  anxiety  to  lasso  some  young 
calves.  He  had  been  very  successful  in  this  sport  sev- 
eral summers  before,  and  secured  some  capital  speci- 
mens to  send  East,  for  curiosity,  or  to  domesticate 
among  the  ranches  for  breeding.  I  was  surprised  to 
learn  how  frequent  was  the  latter  practice  in  this  re- 
gion. Numbers  of  the  settlers  between  Atchison  and 
Fort  Kearney  had  reared  buffalo  calves,  and  crossed 
them  with  domestic  cattle,  the  hybrids  proving  very 
serviceable  working-cattle,  somewhat  surly  and  un- 
manageable at  times,  but  possessing  greater  speed 
and  endurance  than  the  common  ox.  I  was  further 
told,  on  excellent  authority,  what  seemed  hard  of  be- 
lief, and  under  the  circumstances  was  impossible  of 
tangible  demonstration,  that  this  hybrid  had  been 
found  perpetuable.  This  is  a  curious  fact,  when  we 
recollect  how  much  more  the  cow  and  the  buffalo 
differ  from  each  other  than  the  horse  and  the  ass, 
whose  mules  are  still  sterile.  I  was  equally  anxious 
with  Hunger  to  get  a  nice  pair  of  calves,  as  we  were 
sufficiently  near  railroad  communication  to  have  sent 
them  East  to  await  our  return. 

Accordingly  John  Gilbert  and  ourselves  set  out  in 
a  nearly  southwesterly  direction,  leading  diagonally 
between  the  main  course  of  the  Eepublican  and  a 
line  of  tall,  conical  mounds,  called  the  White  Rock 


COMSTOCK'S.  —  A  BUFFALO  HUNT.  71 

Buttes,  parallel  with  the  river  six  miles  further  south. 
We  had  gone  about  three  miles  across  a  rolling  coun- 
try, much  like  the  plain  traversed  from  Comstock's, 
without  seeing  anything  but  the  rear  of  the  herd 
lately  stampeded  by  us,  when  John  Gilbert  caught 
sight  of  a  much  larger  herd,  feeding  a  little  nearer 
the  Republican  than  our  line  of  march.  He  proposed 
that  we  should  separate,  and,  by  alarming  this  herd  at 
different  points,  stampede  them  in  such  confusion  as 
to  break  up  their  order,  make  them  spread  out  and 
open  their  centre  to  attack.  Hunger  looked  through 
his  field-glass,  and  was  sure  he  saw  calves ;  Thompson 
took  a  look,  and  beheld  the  cows  necessarily  accom- 
panying ;  I  saw  buffalo  of  some  description  or  other, 
which  was  all  that  was  needed  to  make  me  join  the 
rest  in  assent  to  John  Gilbert's  proposition. 

Hunger,  Thompson,  and  myself  went  to  the  south- 
erly ;  John  Gilbert  alone  took  toward  the  river  side, 
with  the  intention  of  stampeding  the  herd  back  into 
our  hands.  We  had  gone  a  little  over  a  mile  when 
the  thundering  of  hoofs  announced  that  John  had  suc- 
ceeded, and  the  next  minute  the  herd  came  tearing 
over  a  high  divide  right  toward  us.  As  they  saw  us, 
they  checked  their  impetus;  but  so  near  us  did  they 
get  that  each  of  us  might  have  shot  his  bull  without 
difficulty,  had  our  design  been  so  childish  and  mur- 
derous. As  it  was,  we  left  our  rifles  alone,  not  intend- 
ing to  use  them  again  till  we  could  use  the  lasso  with 
them.  Still,  no  calves  nor  cows  were  visible.  I  be- 
gan to  despair  of  ever  seeing  them. 

As  the  herd  reached  \is,  it  swung  its  front  round 
at  right  angles,  and  made  about  westerly.  Hunger, 
Thompson,  and  I  immediately  rushed  at  it  with  all 
speed,  and  it  separated  into  roughly  divided  detach- 


72       THE  HEART  OF  THE  CONTINENT. 

ments,  one  of  which  each  of  us  selected  to  chase 
down.  The  herd  was  larger  than  any  we  had  yet 
seen.  It  was  impossible  that  our  glasses  should  have 
deceived  us.  There  were  cows  and  calves  somewhere 
in  the  herd,  and  this  was  the  way  to  find  them. 

In  five  minutes  after  I  had  selected  my  squad  for 
attack,  I  was  entirely  separated  from  my  companions. 
The  ground  was  in  splendid  order  for  running ;  the 
lay  of  the  land  as  favorable  ;  my  horse  had  acquired 
his  "  second  wind,"  and  his  enthusiasm  fully  equaled 
my  own.  I  never  knew  the  ecstasy  of  the  mad  gal- 
lop until  now.  Like  young  Lochinvar,  "  We  stayed 
not  for  brake,  we  stopped  not  for  stone."  Some 
draws  which  we  crossed,  made  me  shudder  afterward 
as  I  thought  of  them.  Now  we  were  plunging  with 
headlong  bounds  down  bluffs  of  caving  sand,  fifty  feet 
high,  and  steep  as  a  fortress  glacis,  while  the  buffalo, 
crazy  with  terror,  were  scrambling  half-way  up  to  the 
top  of  the  opposite  side.  Now  we  were  following 
them  in  the  ascent,  my  noble  Nig  using  his  fore-hoofs 
more  like  hands  than  any  horse  I  ever  saw  before, 
fairly  clawing  his  way  up,  with  every  muscle  tense 
through  passionate  emulation.  Now  we  were  on  the 
very  haunches  of  our  game,  with  a  fair  field  before 
us,  and  no  end  to  pluck  and  bottom  for  the  rest  of  the 
chase,  the  buffalo  laboring  heavily,  and  their  immense 
fore-parts  coming  down  on  their  hoofs  with  a  harder 
shock  at  every  jump.  Now  we  saw  a  broad,  slippery 
buffalo-wallow  just  in  time  to  leap  it  clear ;  now  we 
plunged  into  the  very  middle  of  one,  but  Nig  dug 
himself  out  of  the  mud  with  one  frantic  tug,  and  kept 
on.  Still  we  came  closer  to  our  buffaloes,  and  sud- 
denly I  heard  a  loud  thunder  of  trampling  behind 
me. 


COMSTOCK'S.  —  A  BUFFALO  HUNT.  73 

I  looked  over  my  shoulder:  there  in  plain  sight 
was  another  herd,  tearing  down  on  our  rear.  As  I 
afterward  discovered,  this  was  the  herd  stampeded  in 
separate  columns  by  Munger  and  Thompson,  joined 
again  after  making  their  detour.  For  nearly  a  mile 
in  width  stretched  a  line  of  angry  faces,  a  rolling 
surf  of  wind-blown  hair,  a  row  of  quivering  lanterns, 
burning  reddish-brown.  The  column  was  as  deep  as 
the  line.  I  quickly  bethought  myself:  It  is  death  to 
get  involved  in  a  herd  if  my  horse  stumbles.  If 
I  have  both  pluck  and  luck  to  ride  steadily  in  the 
line  of  the  stampede  until  I  can  insinuate  myself 
laterally,  and  make  a  break  out  through  the  side 
of  the  herd,  all  may  go  well  with  me,  as  it  has  with 
several  hunters  of  my  acquaintance,  caught  in  this 
predicament.  It  was  death  to  turn  back.  I  should 
be  trampled  and  gored  to  death.  I  should  be  wiped 
out  like  a  grease-spot,  and  Nig  with  me,  for  the  ter- 
ror of  the  herd  was  too  extreme  for  me  to  hope  to  re- 
stampede  them,  with  Munger  and  Thompson  prob- 
ably somewhere  close  on  their  rear. 

All  this  flashed  through  my  mind  in  an  instant.  Nig 
was  steadily  shortening  the  distance  between  me  and 
the  herd  ahead.  I  had  just  made  up  my  mind  to  ride 
as  long  as  he  would  stand  in  the  line  of  the  stampede, 
when  the  herd  before  me  divided  into  two  columns  to 
pass  around  a  low  butte  I  had  seen  before.  Quick  as 
lightning  this  providential  move  of  theirs  suggested 
the  means  of  my  salvation.  I  made  for  the  mound, 
reached  its  summit,  and  to  Nig's  great  disgust,  though 
he  was  fearfully  short-breathed,  and  trickling  with 
rivulets  of  sweat,  halted  him  instantly  to  await  the 
rear  column.  I  had  not  many  minutes  of  anxiety. 
The  herd  saw  me  fifty  rods  off,  but,  as  I  expected, 


74       THE  HEART  OF  THE  CONTINENT. 

paid  no  more  attention  to  me  than  if  I  had  been  a 
grass-blade.  Nor  could  they  if  they  would.  All 
stampedes  are  alike,  whether  of  men  or  animals.  For 
the  front  line  to  swerve  is  to  be  knocked  down  and 
slain  instanter.  This  vis  a  tergo  gives  the  van  a  cour- 
age of  despair,  while  it  takes  away  all  option  of  move- 
ment. So  the  angry  front  line  of  faces  saw  me  with- 
out fear.  I  had  only  a  minute  of  certain  life.  The 
next  would  see  me  safe  or  beaten  to  a  mummy.  I 
dismounted,  held  my  horse's  head  away  from  the 
coming  herd,  and  faced  it  myself,  with  the  rein  over 
my  arm  and  my  rifle  poised.  As  the  herd  got  within 
a  hundred  yards  of  the  mound,  I  delivered  one  stead- 
ily aimed  ball  at  the  fore-shoulder  of  the  nearest  bull. 
He  gave  a  single  wild  jump,  and  began  limping  on 
three  legs.  I  had  done  for  him.  For  a  few  seconds, 
fear  of  his  pressing  comrades  gave  him  enough  extra 
speed  to  keep  up  with  the  rest ;  but  before  the  line 
reached  the  foot  of  the  mound,  he  had  tumbled,  and 
the  whole  host  was  rushing  over  him.  This  obstacle, 
and  the  terror  of  his  fate,  sent  the  first  lateral  panic 
into  the  hearts  of  the  herd.  Once  more,  as  the  front 
line  came  so  close  that  I  could  almost  have  jumped 
my  horse  on  to  their  backs,  I  fired  my  rifle  again. 
The  ball  did  no  damage  to  any  but  itself,  flattening 
like  putty  on  the  thick-matted  Gibraltar  of  one  old 
bull's  frontispiece,  but  it  served  my  turn,  and  split  the 
herd.  They  divided  just  in  time  to  avoid  being 
crowded  over  the  mound  by  their  rear,  and  in  a  mo- 
ment I  was  standing  on  a  desert  island,  in  a  sea  of 
billowing  backs,  flowed  around  on  either  side  by  a 
half-mile  current  of  crazy  buffaloes. 

Here  was  abundant  opportunity  to  shoot,  but  not 
the  slightest  anxiety  for  doing  so.     I  was  safe ;  I  had 


COMSTOCK'S.  —  A  BUFFALO  HUNT.       75 

such  a  view  of  buffaloes  as  I  never  could  have  ex- 
pected, never  would  enjoy  again.  This  was  all-suffi- 
cient to  me.  I  stood  and  studied  the  host  with  de- 
vouring eyes,  while  my  horse  snorted  and  pulled  at 
the  bridle  in  a  passion  of  enthusiasm. 

The  herd  were  about  five  minutes  in  passing  me. 
During  that  time  I  saw  the  calves  which  Munger  was 
looking  for,  and  Thompson's  much  desiderated  cows, 
beside  numerous  yearlings  and  two-year-olds,  both 
bulls  and  heifers.  There  also  appeared  here  and  there 
a  veteran  bull,  carrying  about  him  the  marks  of  bat- 
tle in  the  form  of  a  stiff  or  broken  leg,  or  a  bad  scar 
in  the  flank.  One  old  fellow  made  as  good  time  on 
three  legs  as  any  of  his  comrades  on  four,  though  his 
useless  member  was  in  front,  where  most  of  the  strain 
falls  in  running.  His  progress  was  absolutely  com- 
ical. He  reminded  me  of  an  aged  ape  hopping,  with 
one  hand  on  the  ground  to  steady  him,  and  his  coun- 
tenance wore  the  most  whimsical  expression,  his  mat 
of  hair  being  torn  off  in  places,  so  as  to  disclose  more 
of  his  features  than  I  ever  saw  in  any  other  buffalo. 
As  he  scrambled  past  in  steady-by-jerks,  Dundreary 
style,  he  seemed  saying,  "  To  be  bothered  in  this  way 
at  my  time  of  life  !  " 

When  the  herd  had  passed,  and  joined  the  body  I 
had  lately  been  chasing,  the  combined  force  stopped 
about  half  a  mile  ahead.  I  turned,  as  the  last  lag- 
gards panted  by  the  mound,  and,  for  the  first  time 
since  I  reached  my  elevation,  paid  attention  to  the 
westward.  Then  I  understood  why  the  stampeders 
had  halted  so  soon.  They  had  come  up  with  the 
main  herd ! 

Yes,  there,  beyond  peradventure,  in  my  plain  sight, 
grazed  the  entire  buffalo  army  of  Middle  Kansas.  As 


76       THE  HEART  OF  THE  CONTINENT. 

far  as  the  western  horizon  the  whole  earth  was  black 
with  them.  From  a  point  a  mile  in  front  of  me  their 
rear  line  extended  on  the  north  to  the  bluffs  bound- 
ing the  Republican,  on  the  south  to  the  very  sum- 
mits of  the  White  Rock  Buttes,  an  entire  breadth  of 
more  than  six  miles.  I  had  no  way  of  measuring  the 
unbounded  plain,  looking  westerly ;  but  a  man  on 
horseback,  in  the  clear  air  of  the  region,  and  with  a 
field-glass  of  Yoigtlander's  as  good  as  mine,  can  recog- 
nize an  object  of  the  size  of  a  buffalo  at  ten  miles'  dis- 
tance. I  will  not  add  my  name  to  the  list  of  travel- 
lers who  have  stated  undeniable  truths  that  nobody 
would  believe.  When  I  say  that  a  hundred  square 
feet  of  room  was  an  exaggerated  average  allowance 
to  the  individual  buffalo  in  the  close-packed  herd  be- 
fore me,  I  have  contributed  all  the  elements  neces- 
sary to  each  of  my  readers  for  his  personal  calcula- 
tion of  the  number  in  sight.  I  never  saw  any  Eastern 
acquaintance  who  would  credit  me  when  I  stated  my 
own  estimate  diminished  by  one  half.  Let  it  be 
enough  to  acknowledge  that  it  reaches  millions.  As 
for  comparisons,  flies  on  a  molasses  barrel,  ants  on  an 
ant-hill,  tadpoles  in  a  puddle,  all  these  strong  but  vul- 
gar similitudes  fail  to  express  the  ideas  of  multitude 
awakened  by  looking  at  that  mighty  throng.  Arith- 
metic is  as  petty  to  the  task  as  the  lightning  calcula- 
tor to  the  expression  of  a  hurricane.  I  have  seen  the 
innumerable  herd  of  laughing  waves  in  a  broad  sunny 
sea ;  I  have  seen  the  same  multitude  lashed  to  mad- 
ness by  a  tropical  cyclone ;  I  remember  my  first  and 
my  succeeding  impressions  of  Niagara ;  but  never  did 
I  see  an  incarnation  of  vast  multitude,  or  resistless 
force,  which  impressed  me  like  the  main  herd  of  the 
buffalo.  The  desire  to  shoot,  kill,  and  capture  utterly 


COMSTOCK'S.  — A  BUFFALO   HUNT.  77 

passed  away.  I  only  wished  to  look,  and  look  till  I 
could  realize  or  find  some  speech  for  the  greatness  of 
Nature  that  silenced  me. 

I  had  gazed  for  nearly  an  hour,  when  it  suddenly 
occurred  to  me  that  more  than  twice  that  time  had 
elapsed  since  I  saw  any  of  my  comrades.  I  referred 
to  the  sun,  for  I  had  no  watch  in  my  hunting-shirt, 
and  saw  that  it  was  at  least  three  o'clock  in  the  after- 
noon. I  took  one  last  look  at  the  buffaloes,  and  came 
down  from  my  mount  of  vision.  The  way  back  I  was 
quite  certain  of.  It  seemed  the  easiest  thing  in  the 
world  to  retrace  my  steps.  I  remounted  Nig,  and  be- 
gan pushing  for  home. 

I  remembered  that  our  camp  was  nearly  due  north 
from  a  certain  characteristic  butte  of  the  White  Kock 
range.  I  resolved  to  bring  this  butte  abreast  of  me, 
travelling  down  the  middle  of  the  plain,  between  it 
and  the  Republican,  then  to  strike  due  north  for  the 
river,  over  the  ground  which  had  become  familiar  to 
us  through  two  days'  hunt. 

This  matter  was  easier  to  promise  than  accomplish. 
I  little  knew  the  deception  of  which  a  traveller  was 
susceptible  on  these  endlessly  uniform  divides.  I 
might  almost  as  well  have  hoped  to  travel  by  foam- 
marks  on  the  waves  of  the  sea  as  by  any  idiosyncra- 
sies in  this  rolling  sward.  But  as  yet  I  was  ignorant 
and  happy. 

My  chief  troubles  were  the  now  plainly  apparent 
fatigue  of  my  horse,  reacting  from  his  late  enthusi- 
asm ;  a  pair  of  badly  sun-burnt  hands,  the  bridle  one 
of  which,  being  the  more  exposed,  was  swollen  into  a 
very  respectable  red  velvet  pincushion,  and  felt  as  if 
it  had  been  dipped  in  a  jar  of  aqua-fortis.  I  was  also 
exceedingly  hungry,  and  had  been  unwise  enough  to 


78       THE  HEART  OF  THE  CONTINENT. 

leave  camp  without  so  much  as  a  piece  of  hard-tack 
in  my  pocket.  I  might  at  least  have  brought  out  a 
canteen  of  pure  water ;  but  not  having  anticipated  a 
protracted  absence  from  the  river,  I  had  neglected 
even  that,  and  began  to  have  a  tongue  like  a  tile. 
My  horse  gradually  became  so  used  up,  that  I  lay 
down  with  his  long  halter  in  my  hand,  and  let  him 
crop  his  dinner  by  piecemeal  while  I  rested,  for  fif- 
teen minutes  at  a  time.  I  found  a  large  sunflower, 
whose  root  I  pulled  up  and  ate ;  but  the  food  was 
rather  scanty,  and  whetted  my  appetite  as  a  relish,  in- 
stead of  satisfying  it  like  a  meal.  But  my  greatest  suf- 
fering presently  came  on  in  the  form  of  intense  thirst. 
Before  I  reached  the  point  abreast  of  the  White 
Rock  Butts,  whence  I  was  to  commence  my  north- 
erly course,  I  was  in  veritable  torment.  I  felt  like  a 
German  Zwieback,  dry-rusked  through  and  through 
by  a  sun  which  pelted  mercilessly  on  that  shadeless 
waste,  hot  as  our  Eastern  July.  I  was  reduced  to  such 
a  deplorable  demoralization  that  I  cheerfully,  nay 
joyfully,  consented  to  relieve  myself,  over  and  over 
again,  in  a  way  at  whose  very  mention  I  had  shud- 
dered when  the  old  hunters  told  me  of  it  in  camp. 
I  lay  down  by  the  side  of  those  stagnant  rain-puddles 
which  stand  in  basins  of  hard-pan  on  the  top  of  the 
divides,  and,  plunging  my  face  in  to  the  very  eye- 
brows, drank  ravenously,  right  over  the  hoof-marks 
of  the  buffaloes.  Sometimes  the  water  was  thicker 
than  cream  with  mud;  sometimes  red  with  the  de- 
jections of  the  herd ;  always  as  hot  as  blood, —  yet  I 
thought  no  more  of  these  things  than  if  I  were  a 
buffalo  myself.  For  the  first  time  I  fully  understood 
the  sufferings  of  travellers  in  the  desert.  When  I 
afterward  came  to  experience  those  sufferings  my- 


COMSTOCK'S.  —  A  BUFFALO  HUNT.       79 

self,  I  found  them  but  little  worse  than  that  trial  on 
the  Kansas  Plains. 

Reaching  the  line  of  range  I  had  selected,  I  struck 
due  north  for  the  river,  sure  of  finding  our  camp  and 
overjoyed  at  the  prospect.  I  looked  from  the  edge  of 
the  bluff,  after  a  toilsome  trudge  of  three  miles  on  a 
tired  horse,  and  saw  everything  to  convince  me  that 
my  course  had  been  correct.  Between  the  bluff  and 
the  river  stretched  a  swale  of  dry  grass,  bounded 
by  two  expanses  of  green  herbage ;  the  first  bottom 
of  the  river  descended  by  two  well-marked  curving 
terraces ;  there  was  a  fine  old  cotton-wood  grove, 
with  a  pair  of  gaps  in  it  where  the  beavers  had  been 
felling ;  above  this  grove  I  saw  a  broad  yellow  sand- 
bar running  diagonally  half-way  across  the  Repub- 
lican ;  and  to  the  eastward  the  river  made  a  short 
curve  toward  me,  narrowing  the  view  of  its  bank 
to  a  mere  strip,  which  was  studded  thickly  with  new 
timber-growth.  Every  feature  which  I  have  related 
was  the  fac-simile  of  a  corresponding  environment 
about  our  camp. 

I  descended,  as  I  thought,  through  the  very  draw 
by  which  we  had  yesterday  approached  the  buffalo 
on  foot.  The  likeness  became  more  and  more  perfect 
as  I  went  down.  The  same  grotesque  forms  pre- 
sented by  the  profile  of  a  precipice  of  indurated 
sand,  the  same  arrangement  of  bushes,  the  same 
puddle  to  which  the  relieved  sentinel  came  down 
when  we  fired  our  first  shots,  the  same  well-worn 
buffalo-path  leading  through  the  draw  to  the  river. 

I  chirruped  cheerfully  to  Nig,  as  in  assurance  that  we 
should  soon  reach  home,  and  struck  into  the  broad 
river-bottom  with  renewed  patience.  I  reached  the 
river*  without  seeing  any  novel  feature  in  the  land- 


80        THE  HEART  OF  THE  CONTINENT. 

scape,  entered  the  cotton-wood  grove,  came  to  the 
very  water's  edge,  —  and  found  nowhere  a  trace  of 
human  kind. 

I  thought  it  must  be  a  joke.  The  party  had  played 
some  trick  on  me.  They  were  punishing  me  for  my 
long  absence  by  hiding  in  the  timber  near  by.  But 
then  where  were  the  wagons  ?  Where  the  horses, 
the  wheel-tracks,  —  above  all,  where  was  the  burnt 
spot  left  by  our  camp-fire  ? 

I  had  to  confess  that  this  was  not  our  camp.  It 
needs  no  explanation  to  understand  how  with  that 
confession  came  a  full  assurance  of  the  fact  that  I  was 
about  as.  badly  lost  as  it  is  possible  for  a  man  to  be. 
If  there  were  one  place  exactly  like  our  camp,  there 
might  be  fifty.  And  so  there  were.  Should  I  go  up 
or  down  the  river  ? 

I  concluded  on  the  latter  course.  I  calculated  as 
nearly  as  possible  my  distance  from  home  when  I 
reached  the  main  herd,  and  found  it  unlikely  that  I 
could  have  made  enough  return  with  my  tired  horse 
to  have  brought  me  abreast  of  the  camp  again.  I  set 
off  along  the  edge  of  the  river  timber,  at  the  best  rate 
my  horse  could  travel.  A  mile  down  I  was  stopped 
by  an  impassable  swamp,  running  entirely  across  from 
the  foot  of  the  bluff  to  the  river  bottom.  The  water 
vegetation  in  it  was  almost  tropically  rank,  and  its 
pools  swarmed  with  ducks.  I  had  no  time  or  thought 
for  shooting.  I  dismounted  from  my  horse,  and,  find- 
ing the  bluff  loose  and  sandy  ten  feet  up,  I  led  him 
along  its  slope  around  the  marsh,  in  momentary  dan- 
ger of  his  falling  on  me,  and  both  of  us  going  into 
the  bog. 

We  now  entered  a  thick  wood,  containing  some  of 
the  grandest  old  trees  I  ever  saw  in  my  life.  They 


COMSTOCK'S.—  A  BUFFALO  HUNT.  81 

were  mostly  elms  and  cotton-woods,  with  an  occasional 
oak,  primeval  in  their  size  and  luxuriance,  making 
the  ground  under  them  black  with  the  shadow  of 
their  dense  foliage,  and  exhibiting  tree-forms  which 
might  fill  an  artist  with  rapture.  They  grew  entirely 
without  underbrush,  on  a  damp,  velvety  lawn  of  short 
grass,  expanding  their  immense  arms  at  the  top  of 
shafts  a  hundred  feet  in  height,  locking  them  together 
into  their  impenetrable  roof,  with  graceful  curves  and 
grotesque  angles,  that  surpassed  anything  in  human 
architecture.  It  was  one  of  those  places  continually 
met  with  in  this  region,  which  so  strongly  simulate 
human  cultivation  that  the  traveller  finds  it  almost 
impossible  to  believe  he  is  not  in  the  park  of  some 
lordly  demesne.  To  this  feeling  all  wild  animals 
contribute,  but  far  beyond  the  rest,  the  gregarious 
buffalo,  by  making  paths  so  like  those  of  a  well  reg- 
ulated country-seat  that  everybody  exclaims  at  the 
first  sight  of  them,  "  Inhabited  after  all !  "  These  are 
thoroughly  well  beaten,  straight  as  a  gardener  could 
lay  them  out,  or  following  the  conformation  of  the 
land  in  curves  that  could  not  be  bettered.  To  add 
to  the  human  suggestions  of  the  delicious  grove  I 
had  entered,  two  such  paths  crossed  each  other  in  its 
centre,  I  found  one  of  them  a  pleasant  relief  to  my 
tired  horse. 

Pursuing  it  for  half  a  mile,  we  emerged  from  the 
grove,  or  more  properly  became  immersed  in  a 
thicket.  Thorn-bushes  hanging  covered  with  wisps 
of  buffalo  hair  recently  scraped  off,  alternated  with 
springy  saplings,  which  in  turn  tore  and  flogged  us, 
till  I  should  have  been  driven  back  had  there  been 
any  way  out  of  the  fix  except  forward.  Patience, 
and  an  occasional  use  of  my  bowie-knife,  at  last 

6 


82        THE  HEART  OF  THE  CONTINENT. 

hacked  us  out  to  daylight ;  but  the  view  that  broke 
on  me  was  as  little  satisfactory  as  the  thicket.  A  nar- 
row rift,  eight  feet  deep  and  three  wide,  its  nearer  side 
a  moist,  springy  clay,  opened  at  my  feet,  discharging 
a  small  stream  into  the  river.  I  tied  my  horse  for  a 
moment,  plunged  down  into  the  fissure,  and  drank 
till  it  seemed  as  if  I  should  burst.  Climbing  up  again, 
I  surveyed  the  opposite  bank.  It  was  the  side  of  the 
main  bluff  itself,  thirty  feet  high,  and  slanting  at  an 
angle  of  little  less  than  seventy  degrees.  The  river 
had  curved  around  to  meet  it  past  the  marsh  and 
wood  which  I  had  just  traversed,  cutting  away  the 
first  bottom  entirely.  But  this  I  did  not  know  till 
afterward.  I  explained  the  nearness  of  the  river  to 
the  precipice,  by  supposing  that  the  bed  of  the  for- 
mer had  fallen  within  the  last  two  miles  sufficiently 
to  bring  the  first  bottom  as  high  above  it  as  the  bluff 
here  appeared.  Upon  this,  I  reasoned  that  I  must, 
after  all,  have  struck  the  stream  too  far  below  our 
camp.  Still,  rather  than  turn  back  through  the 
thicket,  I  would  try  crossing  the  rift  and  ascending 
to  the  top  of  the  bluff,  where  I  would  have  smooth 
ground  for  my  return.  The  difficulty  was  how  to 
get  my  horse  over.  There  was  no  standing-room  for 
a  single  pair  of  hoofs  at  the  base  of  the  bluff  across 
the  ditch.  I  accordingly  built  myself  a  bridge.  In  the 
first  place,  I  flung  lumps  of  clay  from  the  springy  side 
into  the  fissure,  until  I  had  a  surface  nearly  enough 
even  with  the  edge  to  receive  a  superstructure  of 
sticks  hacked  from  the  thicket.  On  this  treacherous 
fascine,  which  it  took  me  a  perspiring  hour  to  com- 
plete, I  managed  to  support  the  hind  hoofs  of  my 
horse  till  he  could  dig  his  front  ones  into  the  bluff. 
I  then  ran  before  him,  caught  his  bridle,  and  scaled 


COMSTOCK'S.— A  BUFFALO  HUNT.  83 

the  height,  with  the  noble  fellow  scrambling  up  after 
me  as  deftly  and  almost  as  perpendicularly  as  a  climb- 
ing monkey.  I  never  saw  a  horse  east  of  the  Mississippi 
that  could  have  comprehended  and  met  the  situation 
like  Nig.  Whoever  came  after  us  to  our  bridge  of 
fascines,  must  have  thought  that  a  very  badly  edu- 
cated company  of  beavers  had  been  there. 

I  wandered  for  a  quarter  of  a  mile  down  the  river. 
The  banks  grew  higher  and  higher  with  every  rod. 
I  found  no  sign  of  human  life  anywhere,  save  the 
remains  of  a  Sioux  camp.  The  occupants  had  not 
been  long  gone ;  some  of  their  lodge-poles  lay  in  a 
bundle  near  the  fire-place,  and  around  it  were  still 
standing  the  crotched  sticks  on  which  they  hung 
their  pots.  I  had  no  anxiety  to  meet  Sioux ;  and  as 
the  hope  of  encountering  my  companions  seemed 
increasingly  slight  in  this  direction,  I  turned  and 
began  retracing  my  steps,  leading  my  horse  by  the 
bridle.  Poor  Nig  was  so  battered  by  his  day's  strain 
and  hunger  that  I  could  make  better  time  in  this 
way  than  on  his  back. 

A  new  misfortune  now  appeared  to  me.  What 
scriptural  writer  says  that  trouble  does  not  come  out 
of  the  ground  ?  He  had  never  contemplated  a  series 
of  draws,  with  precipitous  sides,  running  a  mile  into 
the  heart  of  a  bluff  upon  whose  edge  he  was  travel- 
ling, with  a  tired  horse,  and  used-up  personality. 
Here  was  a  trouble  resulting  from  the  ground,  which 
might  well  excuse  imprecation. 

Did  none  of  my  readers  ever  get  into  a  situation 
where  Nature's  obstacles  seemed  to  have  been  created 
on  purpose  for  him  ?  I  had  descended  one  of  these 
reentrant  draws  at  imminent  peril  to  my  neck,  and 
climbed  the  other  side  with  a  difficulty  only  con- 


84       THE  HEART  OF  THE  CONTINENT. 

quered  by  desperation ;  I  had  made  a  detour  of  at 
least  a  mile,  to  get  around  another  one,  which  looked 
absolutely  untraversable  ;  I  now  came  to  a  third, 
with  sides  literally  precipitous.  Its  walls  were  fifty 
feet  high,  and  ran  sinuously,  eating  about  into  the 
plain  further  than  I  could  see,  with  numerous  lateral 
ramifications.  After  several  vain  attempts  to  flank 
these  trenches  of  Nature,  I  came  back  to  the  edge  of 
the  bluff,  and  considered  myself.  I  was  lost,  faint, 
sick ;  my  horse  quite  worn  out,  and  the  sun  not  an 
hour  high.  I  was  uncomfortably  near  the  Sioux, 
who  a  few  days  before  had  taken  a  Colorado  soldier, 
on  a  hunt  from  Fort  Kearney  and  lost  like  myself;  had 
robbed  him  of  horse,  ammunition,  arms,  all  he  had  in 
the  world ;  pulled  out  his  beard,  and  left  him  naked 
as  he  was  born,  forty  miles  from  the  nearest  white 
trapper.  I  made  up  my  mind  that  I  would  descend 
the  first  practicable  draw,  cross  the  river,  picket  my 
horse,  make  a  supper  of  sunflower-roots  and  wild 
onions,  and  camp  down  under  my  saddle-blankets,  and 
with  the  returning  light  renew  my  search  for  our 
camp,  along  the  northern  and  more  level  bank  of  the 
Republican.  I  was  pretty  sure  that  I  could  find  the 
ford  we  had  crossed,  by  hunting  for  our  wheel-tracks. 
I  accordingly  led  my  horse  down  the  nearest  ramifi- 
cation of  the  great  draw,  and  with  great  difficulty, 
for  the  bottom  was  a  perfect  slough,  escaped  from  my 
embarrassments  upon  the  low  level  of  the  river  bank. 
Before  I  leave  this  entanglement  of  horrors,  I  must 
not  omit  to  say  that  just  before  descending,  I  shot 
my  first  antelope.  He  was  grazing  on  the  side  of  a 
divide,  quite  six  hundred  yards  off,  to  the  naked  eye 
appearing  only  a  small  brown  spot  in  the  sunshine. 
I  wanted  meat  so  badly  that  I  never  asked  myself 


BUFFALO   CALVES.     See  page  70 


\VOLVE3    ATTACKING    A    WOUNDED    BUFFALO.     See  piige  80 


COMSTOCK'S.  -  A  BUFFALO  HUNT.  85 

the  question  how  I  was  going  to  get  round  to  him, 
and  pack  him  home.  He  had  not  seen  or  scented 
me  when  I  lay  down  in  the  grass  and  poised  my  Bal- 
lard,  which  nominally  put  up  for  five  hundred  yards, 
but  at  that  distance  invariably  threw  the  ball  above, 
unless  allowance  was  made  for  its  habits.  I  spent 
as  much  time  in  calculating  my  aim  as  a  boy  of  ten 
over  a  sum  in  division,  and  fired  resting  on  my 
elbows.  My  brown  spot  went  up  into  the  air  with 
one  convulsive  spring,  turned  a  cart-wheel,  and  fell 
on  his  side  in  his  tracks.  The  next  moment  I  saw 
how  impossible  it  was  to  get  him,  but  went  down  the 
draw  excusing  the  murder  by  a  promise  to  go  after 
him  to-morrow.  When  that  morrow  came,  he  was  a 
clean  skeleton,  picked  by  the  wolves.  Though  I  had 
not  the  meat,  I  had  gained  a  pride  and  a  confidence 
in  my  weapon  which  were  everything  to  a  man  in  my 
position,  —  and  hugged  it  close  to  my  breast  ere  I 
swung  it  round  to  my  back,  not  knowing  how  often 
it  might  have  to  save  my  life  before  I  saw  camp 
again.  I  had  many  occasions  to  love  that  rifle 
afterwards ;  and  I  should  be  ungrateful  indeed,  if  I 
did  not  say  that  the  Ballard  breech-loader  is,  without 
a  single  exception,  the  best  arm  for  Western  work 
that  was  ever  invented.  In  good  hands,  it  fires  seven 
balls  a  minute-with  perfect  accuracy,  having  all  the 
advantages  ever  practically  used  in  a  repeater ;  it  is 
the  simplest  in  its  mechanism  of  all  breech-loading 
weapons,  and  never  once  got  out  of  order  during  a 
daily  use  of  eight  months.  Its  breech  is  absolutely 
powder-tight,  through  the  very  construction  of  its 
cartridge ;  this  cartridge  is  an  entire  load,  including 
percussion  material,  and  cleans  the  bore  in  leaving  it; 
nothing  can  be  more  portable,  simpler,  safer.  The 


86        THE  HEART  OF  THE  CONTINENT. 

man  who  is  competent  to  use  a  rifle  at  all  need  never 
miss  with  it,  and  one  who  has  made  its  acquaintance 
will  never  be  without  it  in  the  wilderness.  If  this  be 
high  praise,  I  can  only  say  that  every  expert  who  has 
seen  its  performance  agrees  with  me.  Over  and  over 
again  in  the  far  West,  old  hunters  became  so  enam- 
ored of  it  as  to  offer  me  its  original  cost,  several  times 
told. 

I  was  half  way  across  the  first  bottom  when  the 
sun  went  out  of  sight.  Simultaneously  with  his 
disappearance,  the  wolves  seemed  to  be  assembling 
for  jubilee.  In  every  quarter  I  could  see  one  of 
either  the  big  gray  or  the  coyote  variety.  They  did 
not  seem  alarmed  at  me,  and  sat  up  on  their  haunches 
like  so  many  shepherd  dogs,  in  a  circle  around  me  and 
poor  tired  Nig,  making  the  air  dismal  with  their  dis- 
cordant howls.  I  was  not  afraid  of  them,  for  they 
never  attack  a  man  unless  mad  with  hunger ;  but 
their  presence,  worn  out  as  I  was,  filled  me  with 
gloom  and  foreboding.  They  seemed  like  harpy  old 
women  at  a  country  funeral,  crowding  around  to  get 
a  last  look  at  the  corpse.  Moreover,  they  might  at- 
tack my  picketed  horse  in  force  during  the  night; 
and  personal  affection  for  him  after  my  trial  of  his 
intelligent  faithfulness,  to  say  nothing  of  my  own 
loneliness  if  he  were  killed,  made  me  very  anxious 
not  to  lose  him. 

Despite  the  depression  begotten  of  the  wolves,  my 
spirits  had  still  to  touch  their  zero  point.  Crossing 
the  river  bottom  about  a  hundred  rods  from  me,  I 
presently  saw  a  man,  coatless,  hatless,  and,  to  my 
field-glass,  of  a  rich-brown  complexion,  black-haired, 
and  carrying  a  gun.  So  this  was  the  meaning  of  the 
deserted  Sioux  camp  on  the  bluff!  How  far  off  were 
the  rest  of  the  band  ? 


COMSTOCK'S.—  A  BUFFALO  HUNT.  87 

I  knew  it  would  not  do  to  show  the  white  feather. 
I  leaped  on  my  horse,  whom  I  had  still  been  leading, 
and  rode  toward  the  savage,  hallooing  with  all  my 
might.  He  stopped  for  a  minute,  eyed  me  curiously, 
took  down  his  gun,  thought  better  of  it,  and  left  for 
the  neighboring  timber.  Upon  this  I  put  spurs  to 
poor  Nig,  who  met  the  exigency  with  all  his  reserve 
capital  of  speed.  In  five  minutes  more  I  was  on  the 
brink  of  the  river. 

Directly  opposite,  on  the  northern  bank,  stood  a 
snow-white  tent,  and  above  it  floated  St.  George's 
Cross ! 

If  Robinson  Crusoe,  in  one  of  his  goat  hunts,  had 
suddenly  come  to  the  office  of  the  British  consulate, 
he  could  not  have  been  taken  more  aback  by  that 
sight  than  I  by  this  ! 

I  rubbed  my  eyes  to  make  sure  that  it  was  not  a 
dream  of  exhausted  nerves  and  an  empty  stomach. 
But  my  horse  gave  a  joyful  neigh,  which  was  quickly 
answered  by  several  of  the  same  sort,  in  the  tent's 
immediate  neighborhood.  I  knew  horses  were  not 
given  to  nervous  hallucination,  and,  without  any  at- 
tempt to  explain  a  verdict  which  could  not  be  im- 
pugned, plunged  Nig  into  the  Republican,  and  forded 
to  the  opposite  shore.  A  bluff,  jolly  Englishman,  of 
undeniable  Pall  Mall  flavor,  hailed  me  as  I  touched 
the  bank,  and  pointed  out  the  access  to  his  camp. 
This  was  pitched  on  high  ground,  surrounded  by  a 
slough  except  at  one  narrow  point,  which  was  cov- 
ered with  the  densest  forest  and  undergrowth.  If 
an  Englishman's  house  is  his  castle,  his  camp  in  this 
instance  was  still  more  so.  Twenty  resolute  white 
men  could  have  defended  it  against  a  thousand  Sioux. 
Nothing  in  the  defenses  of  Washington  was  stronger 


88     THE  HEAKT  OF  THE  CONTINENT. 

by  natural  position.  If  the  Rev.  Clarence  FitzPotts, 
with  his  love  of  the  Mediaeval  had  been  there,  he 
would  have  erected  a  ruined  donjon  keep  upon  it 
immediately. 

With  all  the  aid  of  friendly  showing,  I  spent  a  full 
half-hour  in  getting  round  to  shake  the  hands  I  had 
seen  extended  to  me  on  my  landing.  I  never  knew 
that  the  sight  of  a  British  flag,  and  the  sound  of  the 
British  accent,  could  make  me  as  glad  as  I  was  when 
I  reached  the  camp.  I  was  received  with  a  genuine 
cordial  welcome,  which  made  me  forgive  Liverpool 
and  the  "  Morning  Post."  My  new  acquaintance  and 
his  comrades  were  members  of  Lord  Lyons's  embassy, 
out  on  a  buffalo  hunt  like  myself.  They  had  come  all 
the  way  from  Washington  to  see  a  herd,  but  as  yet 
had  not  sighted  a  single  bull.  I  was  able  to  give 
them  cheering  news,  and  encourage  them  with  the 
prospect  of  approaching  reward  for  a  difficult  jour- 
ney. They  had  turned  off  in  the  wrong  direction 
from  the  high  northern  divide,  and  found  a  series  of 
bad  draws  and  rough  hammocks,  which  much  ham- 
pered their  progress.  It  was  as  John  Gilbert  had  said. 
His  unerring  eye  had  not  failed  him.  I  now  saw  what 
a  good  thing  for  me  it  had  proved  that  they  went 
astray.  Such  a  happy  providence  is  not  vouchsafed 
to  one  man  in  a  thousand  as  this  discovery  of  white 
friends  and  civilized  shelter,  when  lost  in  the  wild 
heart  of  the  Continent. 

It  is  hardly  necessary  to  say  that  the  Indian  I  had 
seen  proved  to  be  an  attache  of  the  party.  He  had 
gone  out  hunting,  and,  when  he  returned,  had  a  story 
as  interesting  as  my  own,  about  a  savage  figure  start- 
ing from  the  grass. 

My  horse  was  picketed.     I  had  made  amends  for 


COMSTOCK'S.  —  A  BUFFALO  HUNT.        89 

the  day's  inanition  by  a  hearty  supper  of  Yarmouth 
bloaters,  Scotch  marmalade,  toasted  pilokbread, 
canned  beef,  and  English  breakfast  tea.  There  was  a 
dreamy  quiet  over  the  whole  twilight  landscape,  and 
I  sat  in  it  smoking  my  pipe,  with  a  sense  of  perfect 
rest,  only  broken  by  my  appreciation  of  the  anxiety 
which  would  be  felt  for  me  by  my  party. 

I  had  finished  my  pipe,  and  sat  chatting  with  one 
of  the  party,  when  another  member  came  from  the 
tent  with  a  troubled  face,  and  asked  me  if  I  knew 
anything  about  medicine. 

"Too  much,'"  I  replied :  "  who  is  sick  of  it  now ?" 

"  Mr. has  just  been  attacked  with  terrible 

distress  in  the  epigastrium.  He  is  suffering  from 
wretched  cramps,  and  I  don't  know  but  he  may  be 
in  serious  danger." 

I  saw  that  his  trouble  was  only  one  of  our  ordinary 
Western  summer  affairs,  and,  knowing  that  it  would 
presently  cure  itself,  set  to  work  to  relieve  the  imme- 
diate pain.  I  had  one  of  the  servants  build  a  roaring 
fire,  and  set  on  it  a  camp-kettle  full  of  water.  In 
about  five  minutes  this  was  scalding  hot,  and  I  kept 
a  steady  express-train  of  towels,  freshly  wrung  out  of 
it,  running  between  it  and  the  epigastric  station  re- 
ferred to. 

This  treatment  was  an  instantaneous  success  in 
more  senses  than  one.  It  not  only  quieted  the  pa- 
tient's pain,  but  brought  relief  to  the  anxiety  of  his 
friends.  When  the  bright  fire  I  had  made  leapt  up 
into  the  dark,  it  became  a  beacon  to  two  despondent 
horsemen,  who  were  searching  vainly  for  me  on  the 
southern  bluff.  They  immediately  pushed  for  it ;  and 
nearly  an  hour  after  the  first  towel  had  started  from 
the  kettle,  Munger  and  John  Gilbert  appeared  at  the 


90        THE  HEART  OF  THE  CONTINENT. 

further  bank  of  the  river,  and  shouted,  "  Halloo  ! "  I 
left  my  patient  sinking  into  a  pleasant  sleep,  and  dis- 
closed to  them  myself  and  my  safety,  after  which  I 
had  the  pleasure  of  piloting  them  round  the  slough 
by  the  same  path  which  had  led  me  to  camp. 

They  were  as  glad  to  see  me  as  I  to  see  them.  I 
found  that  they  had  been  in  search  of  me  for  three 
hours,  having  returned  from  their  hunt  to  dinner,  and 
started  out  again  to  look  me  up  soon  after  that.  I  in- 
troduced them  to  my  new  friends,  got  them  supper, 
and  then  we  all  camped  down  under  our  blankets 
(my  friends  had  thoughtfully  brought  mine  out  to 
me),  to  await  the  daylight  that  should  enable  us  to 
return. 

The  impression  in  our  own  camp  had  been  that  I  was 
killed  or  horribly  mangled  by  some  old  bull,  whom  I 
had  brought  to  bay.  Such  things  happen  every  sea- 
son ;  and  the  fact  that  Nig  was  famous  for  his  pluck  in 
riding  up  to  the  very  head  of  the  buffalo  whom  his 
master  had  wounded,  did  not  diminish  the  fear  of  my 
friends  in  my  behalf. 

I  further  found  that  I  had  been  within  a  mile  of 
our  camp,  when  I  struck  the  high  bluff  where  I  found 
the  deserted  Indian  camp.  I  learned  a  new  fact  about 
the  bluffs  of  the  Republican.  They  do  not  run  par- 
allel with  the  river,  but  alternately  recede  and  ap- 
proach, making  the  river  bottom  a  succession  of  am- 
phitheatres, the  ends  of  whose  semicircles  rise  precip- 
itously from  the  water,  like  the  bluff  in  question.  Had 
I  known  this  fact,  I  should  not  have  been  misled  by 
the  conformation  of  the  land.  The  very  next  amphi- 
theatrical  bottom  below  the  Indian  bluff  was  the  one 
on  which  our  party  lay  encamped. 

This  had  been  a  day  of  curious  good  fortune  to  me, 


COMSTOCK'S.  —  A  BUFFALO  HUNT.       91 

though  I  regretted  to  think  that  it  all  arose  from 
some  corresponding  misfortune  on  the  part  of  my 
British  friends.  If  they  had  not  diverged  from  their 
course  on  the  northern  divide,  I  should  have  crossed 
the  river  to-night,  only  to  change  my  place  of  deso- 
lation ;  there  would  have  been  no  British  flag  here  to 
gladden  an  American  eye.  If  my  friend  had  not  been 
attacked  in  the  epigastrium,  I  should  have  built  no 
fire.  Had  I  built  none,  my  comrades  would  have 
turned  back  to  camp  in  despair.  They  had  just  con- 
cluded to  do  so,  when  my  beacon  flamed  up  through 
the  dark.  I  thought  of  these  things  with  a  tendency 
to  philosophize,  but  Zeno  himself  would  have  gone  to 
sleep  after  such  a  day  as  I  had  spent.  In  five  min- 
utes, thoughtless  and  philosophers,  we  were  all  "  saw- 
ing gourds  "  together  in  the  land  of  Nod. 

The  sun  was  not  half  an  hour  high  when  our  blan- 
kets were  strapped  behind  our  saddles,  and  we  our- 
selves had  shaken  hands  with  our  kind  hosts.  We 
had  gone  as  far  as  Turkey  Draw,  a  wet  ravine  about 
four  miles  from  the  English  camp  (and  very  well 
named,  as  the  rapid  departure  from  their  nests  of 
several  turkey-hens  at  our  approach  convinced  us), 
when  we  caught  sight  of  two  fine  buffalo  on  the  broad 
meadow,  bordering  the  opposite  side  of  the  draw.  I 
felt  glad  of  an  opportunity  for  retrieving  myself,  and 
bringing  a  little  meat  home  to  camp,  after  my  long 
absence.  So  I  stole  quietly  across  the  stream  into 
its  fringing  timber,  and,  dismounting  from  Nig,  took 
steady  ami  at  the  nearest  buffalo.  He  was  grazing 
with  his  haunches  toward  me.  The  ball  broke  his 
right  hip,  and  he  plunged  away  on  three  legs,  the 
other  swinging  useless.  I  leapt  on  my  horse,  put  spurs 
to  him,  and  was  in  three  minutes  close  on  the  bull's 


92       THE  HEART  OF  THE  CONTINENT. 

rear.  To  my  astonishment,  and  the  still  greater  sur- 
prise of  the  two  old  hunters  who  came  after  me,  the 
unhurt  bull  stuck  to  his  comrade's  side  without  flinch- 
ing. I  fired  another  shot,  which  took  effect  in  the 
lungs  of  the  first  buffalo ;  the  second  sheered  off  for  a 
moment,  but  instantly  returned  to  his  friend.  The 
wounded  buffalo  became  distressed,  and  slackened  his 
pace ;  the  unwounded  one  not  only  retarded  his,  but 
actually  stopped,  came  to  the  rear  of  his  friend,  and 
stood  with  his  head  down,  offering  battle  !  This  was 
the  first  instance  of  such  fidelity  known  to  Hunger, 
John  Gilbert,  or  any  old  hunter  to  whom  I  have  re- 
lated it. 

The  buffalo  bull,  in  pairing  season,  will  forsake  his 
wounded  cow ;  the  cow  will  not  stand  a  moment  to 
protect  her  hurt  calf;  yet  here  was  a  devotion  which 
had  no  instinct  to  inspire  it,  an  ideal  camaraderie  rare 
even  among  men.  The  sight  was  to  all  three  of  us  a 
sublime  one.  We  could  no  more  have  accepted  the 
challenge  of  this  brave  creature  than  we  could  have 
smitten  Damon  at  the  side  of  Pythias.  Epic  bull ! 
Bull  worthier  of  heroic  bronzes  than  half  the  man- 
made  heroes  who  prance  in  brass  on  public  squares ! 
I  had  once  in  college  a  bosom  friend  like  thee.  How 
strangely  the  grotesque  intertwines  with  our  life's 
dearest  things,  and  becomes  transfigured  above  laugh- 
ter, when  those  things  are  consecrated  of  death !  My 
friend  was  called,  in  the  rude  style  of  man's  endear- 
ment, "  Our  little  Buffalo  Bull,"  —  for  he  was  strong, 
vital,  impetuous,  and  came  from  the  Lake  City  of  New 
York  State,  which  gave  him  the  former  half  of  his 
soubriquet.  If  that  man  were  by  my  side  in  peril, 
brave  bull,  he  would  stick  by  his  friend  to  the  death, 
as  thou  by  thine.  But  he  fell  at  Seven  Pines,  in  the 


COMSTOCK'S.  —  A  BUFFALO  HUNT.        93 

front  of  his  regiment,  with  a  ball  through  the  bravest 
forehead  that  ever  faced  friend  or  foe.  Go,  noble  bull ! 
I  cannot  shoot !  I  wish  I  had  not  slain  thy  brother ! 

The  wounded  buffalo  ran  on  to  the  border  of  the 
next  wet  draw,  troubling  us  little  to  keep  up  with 
him,  and  in  attempting  to  cross  fell  headlong  down 
the  steep,  oozy  bank,  and  never  rose  again.  Not  till 
that  moment,  when  courage  was  useless  forever,  did 
faithful  Achates  drop  from  the  side  of  his  ^Eneas,  and 
consider  his  own  safety  in  flight.  We  took  off  our 
hats  to  him  as  he  walked  sullenly  away,  and  gave 
three  cordial  cheers  to  his  departing  form  as  it  van- 
ished beyond  the  fringing  timber. 

Having  cut  off  the  hump  and  the  tongue  of  our 
game,  we  continued  our  way  to  camp,  reaching  it  after 
about  four  miles'  further  travel.  Persons  desiring  to 
know  how  I  was  received,  will  please  consult  "  The 
Lost  Heir,"  T.  Hood  author.  Next  to  having  thought 
your  friend  dead,  and  found  out  you  were  correct, 
there  is  nothing  more  disagreeable  than  to  think  so 
and  find  it  a  mistake.  "  So  much  good  tears  lost,"  as 
Talfourd  said  of  a  lady  who  cried  all  the  way  through 
Mrs.  Siddons'  "Kosalind,"  supposing  it  to  be  her  Lady 
Constance.  However,  my  recent  misadventure  re- 
sulted well,  in  having  convinced  us  all  of  the  propri- 
ety of  a  compact  never  hereafter  to  stray  away  from 
our  own  party  on  the  Plains. 

When  I  had  received  the  full  measure  due  me  of 
felicitation  and  scolding,  the  horses  which,  just  as  I 
arrived,  had  been  put  under  saddle  with  the  intention 
of  going  out  to  look  up  Munger  and  John  Gilbert,  as 
well  as  myself,  were  brought  back  to  their  original 
positions,  and,  breaking  up  camp,  we  all  set  out  for 
a  meadow  five  miles  further  down  the  ^Republican,  on 


94        THE  HEART  OF  THE  CONTINENT. 

the  same  side.  Our  prevailing  motive  was  to  gratify 
Thompson's  inextinguishable  enthusiasm  for  cows.  If 
he  had  been  Juno's  cestrum,  poor  lo  would  have  fared 
even  more  pitiably  than  the  poets  tell  us.  Thompson 
was  a  capital  fellow  and  shot ;  but  if  I  were  called  on 
in  a  court  of  justice  to  testify  what  I  regarded  the 
salient  point  of  his  character,  candor  would  force  me 
to  confess  "cows."  Despite  the  failures  of  yesterday, 
he  was  as  certain  that  a  promised  land  of  cows  was 
flowing  with  milk  and  calves  just  beyond  the  far  tim- 
ber as  if  he  had  been  permitted  to  stand  where  Moses 
stood,  and  view  the  landscape  o'er.  It  was  impossi- 
ble not  to  catch  the  infection  of  such  certainty.  To 
be  sure,  I  had  seen  the  main  herd  in  a  diametrically 
opposite  direction,  and  all  the  stampeded  detachments 
fled  that  way ;  but  how  so  much  conviction  could  be 
based  on  an  entire  absence  of  cow  was  a  psychological 
problem  we  felt  inadequate  to  solve.  So  we  blithely 
set  forth  with  Thompson,  a  boo-scopic  fervor  gleam- 
ing from  every  eye. 

Our  way  led  along  the  first  bottom  through  a  broad 
dry  slash  of  last  year's  grass,  yellow  as  a  wheat-field. 
We  occasionally  sent  a  turkey-hen  rattling  from  her 
nest,  as  we  approached  a  timbered  draw,  and  saw  an 
antelope  or  two,  but  no  fresh  buffalo-sign  appeared, 
or  anything  else  of  striking  interest.  An  hour's  ride 
brought  us  to  one  of  the  forward-curving  extremi- 
ties of  the  high  bluff,  and  we  were  compelled  to  ford 
the  river  to  the  low  bottom  on  the  other  side.  We 
had  great  difficulty  in  getting  our  wagons  across. 
The  middle  of  the  most  practicable  ford  we  could 
find,  proved  to  have  as  treacherous  a  quicksand  bot- 
tom as  one  ever  sees.  Our  horses  fell,  and  were  only 
kept  from  drowning  by  the  most  vigorous  efforts  to 


COMSTOCK'S.  —  A  BUFFALO  HUNT.  95 

keep  their  noses  perpendicular.  Our  wagons  sank  so 
rapidly,  that,  to  save  their  tires  from  following  their 
hubs  out  of  sight,  we  were  all  compelled  to  strip  our- 
selves, plunge  in,  unload  them,  and  carry  their  con- 
tents to  the  shore.  The  water  rose  over  the  bottom- 
boards,  and  there  stopped  as  we  got  the  last  box  of 
hard-tack  safe  to  land.  We  then  hitched  our  saddle 
horses,  which  with  the  buggy  had  crossed  safely,  by 
extempore  breast-straps  and  their  picket-ropes,  to  the 
tugs  of  our  struggling  wagon-teams,  and  managed  to 
unslough  them  just  in  time. 

The  sun  was  as  bright,  the  sky  as  clear,  as  yester- 
day, and  all  the  party,  more  especially  myself,  with 
a  red-hot  pincushion  for  a  hand,  were  greatly  fa- 
tigued and  perspired.  Halting  our  horses  to  rest  un- 
der the  shade  of  some  fine  old  cotton-woods  between 
the  river  and  the  open,  we  plunged  back  into  the  Re- 
publican, and  sucked  refreshment  through  every  pore, 
during  a  bath  which  lasted  nearly  an  hour.  Over  and 
above  this  delightful  relief,  our  swim  had  some  inter- 
esting scientific  results,  which  I  transfer  almost  verba- 
tim from  the  hurried  pages  of  my  field-book,  apologiz- 
ing for  any  deficiency  which  may  be  found  in  definite- 
ness  of  nomenclature,  by  the  fact  that  in  such  circum- 
stances as  ours  an  amateur  scientist  has  neither  books 
nor  tests,  except  his  own  memory  and  intuitions. 

1.  Along  the  river  banks,  and  in  •  holes  of  its  bed, 
we  found  several  strong  chalybeate  springs,  with  bog- 
iron  about  their  spiracles.  Everywhere  we  discovered 
iron  ore  of  some  kind  in  immediate  proximity  to  the 
water.  Much  of  it  was  peroxide  mixed  into  a  yellow 
mass  with  clay;  but  we  found  some  specimens  of 
black-scale  that  were  almost  virgin-pure,  —  certainly, 
I  should  say,  reaching  ninety  per  cent,  of  metal.  It 


96        THE  HEART  OF  THE  CONTINENT. 

appeared  in  large  enough  quantities  to  make  its  work- 
ing indubitably  valuable,  when  the  Pacific  Railroad 
shall  have  given  an  outlet  to  the  products  of  the 
Plains. 

2.  We  found,  both  above  and  under  water,  slate  in 
every  stage  of  its  formation,  from  the  soft  layer  of  clay, 
newly  compacted  into  a  slab,  to  the  hardest  kind  of 
uncrystalline  shale.  When  we  dug  down  and  brought 
up  masses  of  the  river  bottom,  they  were  laminated 
in  parallel  bands  of  varying  color,  which  showed  us 
plainly,  as  if  written  in  characters  of  light,  the  succes- 
sive periods  of  changing  detritus  brought  down  by 
the  stream.  Some  of  the  masses  cracked  across  with 
a  true  slaty  fracture,  square  and  straight,  breaking 
under  slight  pressure.  Some  bent  like  fresh  clay.  All 
laminated  easily.  A  large  number  of  specimens  con- 
tained shells;  some  of  the  older  masses  had  them 
fossilized  •  and  in  none  did  they  belong  to  any  species 
whose  living  representatives  we  could  find  along  the 
stream.  Most  of  them  were  acephalous, — allied  to 
the  clam ;  some  of  them  had  corrugated  valves ;  one 
or  two,  the  cardinal  expansion  of  the  scallop.  Several 
were  ostracidce.  One  particularly  hard  lump  of  clay- 
rock,  which  laminated  with  comparative  difficulty, 
was  a  perfect  congeries  of  gasteropod  univalves,  both 
fossil  shell  and  cast  remaining  perfect.  What  sur- 
prised me  most  was  to  find  slate  containing  these 
obsolete  shells,  so  soft  and  so  inchoate  in  its  own  petri- 
faction ;  also  to  find  such  abundance  of  perfect  fossils 
in  clay-shale  at  all.  All  geologists  know  that  through- 
out our  Eastern  region  this  friable  rock  is  the  poorest 
possible  receptacle  for  the  preservation  of  remains. 
I  ascribe  the  durability  of  the  matrix  in  the  present 
instance  to  a  small  per  cent,  of  lime  acting  as  a  ce- 
ment. 


COMSTOCK'S.  -A  BUFFALO  HUNT.  97 

3.  Numerous  flat  plates   of  a  yellow  argillaceous 
limestone  came  up  from  the  bed  of  the  river,  and 
were  found  in  situ  on  its  bank.     These  did  not  lami- 
nate, but  broke  across  with  as  square  a  fracture  as 
the  slate.     The  lime  was  in  combination, — probably 
an  impure  gypsum;  but  as  to  that,  in  the  absence 
of  chemical  tests,  I  could  only  judge  by  a  sulphurous 
taste  and  smell  at  the  fracture. 

4.  Everywhere  in  the  river  appeared  a  very  re- 
markable conglomerate,  and  like  the  slate  in  exhib- 
iting all  the  stages  of  formation.    The  matrix  was  the 
blue  clay  of  the  bank,  the  rubble  was  the  gravel  of 
the  bottom.     It  was  most  interesting  to  read  the  his- 
tory of  its  formation  in  the  progressive  specimens. 
A  lump  of  heavy  clay  breaks  off  the  shore,  and  is 
rolled  over  the  pebbles  of  the  bed  by  a  rapid  shallow 
current,  which  presently  gives  it  a  spherical,  oval,  or 
cylindrical  contour,  and  studs  it  with  a  mass  of  small 
imbedded  stones.    As  these  sink  deeper,  the  clay  laps 
over  them,  and  begins  catching  a  new  layer  of  pebbles 
on  its  fresh  surface.     Some  less  recent  balls  which  we 
brought  up  from  the  bed  were  two  feet  in  circumfer- 
ence, and  little  else  than  a  mass  of  pebbles,  cemented 
by  hardened  clay.     Several  were  so  compacted  and 
indurated  that  the  surface  seemed  nearly  as  homoge- 
neous as  porphyry,  the  matrix  having  become  little 
less  hard  than  the  flintiest  pebbles. 

This  sight  staggered  me  in  my  own  preconceived 
view,  and  that  of  many  geologists,  regarding  the 
igneous  origin  of  the  harder  conglomerates.  From 
what  I  saw  I  could  well  conceive  how  the  very  hard- 
est might  have  been  the  result  of  mere  water-opera- 
tions. I  had  regarded  the  pebbles  of  igneous  origin, 
found  in  conglomerates,  as  presumptive  proof  of  the 


98        THE  HEART  OF  THE  CONTINENT. 

same  origin  for  the  whole  mass.  But  the  pebbles  in 
any  conglomerate  might  easily  have  been  the  detritus 
rolled  from  hypogene  rocks  down  the  bed  of  a  stream 
with  tenacious  clay  banks  like  the  Republican.  This 
view  opened  to  me  a  new  field  of  speculation  upon 
the  aqueous  and  igneous  theories  of  many  formations. 

5.  The  pebbles  and  breccia-like  detritus  which  in- 
here in  the  above   conglomerates,  are   exceedingly 
diversified.    I  found  among  other  water- worn  detritus, 
appearing   in   patches  between  the  clay  and  quick- 
sand of  the  bottom,  every  possible  kind  of  silicious 
material,  such  as  agate,  pure  quartz  crystal,  smoky, 
rosy,  and  cloudy  quartz,  cornelian  (impure),  cellular 
quartz,  and  quartz  united  with  feldspar  and  horn- 
blende, or  both,  in  all  proportions  and  manners.    One 
specimen  of  the  cellular  kind,  associated  with  fibrous 
hornblende,  was  peculiarly  beautiful,  and  resembled 
some  of  the  rich  auriferous  specimens  which  I  after- 
ward found  in  the  Colorado  mines  (Gregory  and  Bob- 
tail lodes).     All  these  minerals  I  regard  as    brought 
down  by  the  ice  and  current  from  the  head  of  the  Re- 
publican, which,  despite  the   United   States  Survey 
maps,  is  in  all  probability  to  be  found  as  far  west  as 
Denver,  and  thirty  miles  south.   They  are  all  of  Rocky 
Mountain  formations,  and  resemble  no  outcrop  in  the 
region  where  I  found  them. 

6.  To  a  similar  source  may  be  ascribed  the  small 
particles  of  mica  discovered  in  the  ferruginous  sand 
of  the  bed.    In  my  field-book  I  wrote  "must"  instead 
of  "may,"  but  after  discoveries  made  it  necessary  for 
me  to  suspend  a   decision.     When   I  reached  Fort 
Kearney,  Lieutenant  Davis,  then  garrison  command- 
ant, showed  me  a  specimen  of  mica  which  he  had 
found,  with  many  others  like  it,  in  clay  beds  on  the 


COMSTOCK'S.— A  BUFFALO  HUNT.  99 

Republican,  about  twenty  miles  above  our  second  ford. 
I  could  not  gather  from  his  description  as  to  whether 
it  lay  apparently  in  situ  or  washed  in  with  other  debris. 
If  the  former  be  the  true  case,  it  opens  the  same  in- 
teresting question  regarding  the  aqueous  or  igneous 
origin  of  mica,  which  a  little  above  was  started  about 
the  conglomerate.  If  the  formation  of  mica  can  be 
gradual  and  aqueous,  like  that  of  clay  shale,  Lieuten- 
ant Davis'  specimen  would  be  an  excellent  illustration 
of  the  mineral  in  its  earlier  stages.  It  was  so  soft 
that,  although  in  a  tabular  prism  and  nearly  quite 
transparent,  I  could  scratch  it  almost  as  easily  as 
putty,  and  scrape  its  edges  into  powder  with  my  nail, 
and  without  scaling  off  the  laminae.  At  first  sight  it 
appeared  like  calc-spar,  and  not  till  it  refused  to  effer- 
vesce with  acids  did  it  occur  to  me  to  try  its  cleav- 
age, when  it  laminated  with  ease  to  an  indefinite 
thinness,  each  sheet  showing  a  perfect  micaceous  iri- 
descence on  the  surface. 

7.  I  also  found  an  immense  boulder  of  almost  pure 
feldspar,  the  largest  mass  not  distinctly  crystalline 
that  I  have  ever  seen.     It  was  as  hard  as  iron,  of  a 
nearly  similar  weight,  and  about  three  feet  in  circum- 
ference. 

8.  Near  our  first  ford  I  found  a  small  outcrop  of 
impure  shaly-brown  coal,  of  no  apparent  commercial 
value.     Butler  told  me  that  he  had  seen  an  outcrop- 
ping seam  of  coal  on  the  Little  Blue  Bluffs  back  of 
the  ranch.   I  had  no  time  to  go  and  examine  it, — can- 
not therefore  be  certain  that  it  is  true  coal, — but  am 
inclined  to  believe  both  this  and  the  Republican  out- 
crop of  the  same  period  as  contemporary  with  much 
which  I  afterward  found  near  Denver,  and  which  was 
indubitably  tertiary.     Of  that  we  shall  speak  further. 


100      THE  HEART  OF  THE  CONTINENT. 

From  our  ford  we  moved  down  along  the  north 
bank  to  the  intersection  of  the  Fort  Biley  and  Fort 
Kearney  trail  with  the  Republican  first  bottom.  In 
some  places  the  track  was  so  overgrown  with  grass 
that  it  needed  John  Gilbert's  eyes  to  find  it,  and  con- 
siderable imagination  to  conceive  how  it  could  have 
been  but  a  few  years  ago  a  comparatively  important 
route  from  the  Kaw  to  the  Rocky  Mountains.  At  this 
point  a  decayed  old  bridge  of  logs  overhung  a  small 
stream  emptying  into  the  Republican,  and  just  above 
it  the  beaver  dams  were  plentier  and  more  interest- 
ing than  we  anywhere  saw  them  during  our  journey. 
We  here  halted  for  dinner;  and  Thompson's  cows  not 
having  yet  turned  up  with  any  fresh  steak,  we  were 
compelled  to  feed  on  canned  provisions.  These  dis- 
posed of,  Hunger,  the  artist,  and  myself  continued  in 
the  buggy  along  a  beautifully  smooth,  grassy  bottom, 
with  gigantic  cotton-woods  fringing  the  river  all  the 
way,  to  a  point  about  a  mile  above  the  junction  of 
White  Rock  Creek  with  the  Republican.  Here  we 
picketed  our  horses,  and  prepared  to  camp  down, 
building  a  magnificent  fire  of  old  logs,  with  a  hollow 
cotton-wood  for  a  chimney.  Thompson  finally  ap- 
peared to  tell  us  that  the  others  had  got  tired,  and 
were  camping  four  miles  above,  also  to  ask  if  we  had 
seen  any  cows.  We  all  the  more  regretted  to  say  that 
we  had  not,  inasmuch  as  the  wagons  contained  our 
whole  commissariat,  and  we  were  hungry  enough  to 
have  done  anything  for  a  supper  except  reharness 
and  ride  back  four  miles  after  we  had  camped  down 
for  the  night.  Thompson  returned  to  the  base  of 
supplies,  and  we  went  to  bed  supperless.  Substance 
being  denied  us,  we  were  fain  to  content  ourselves 
with  shadows.  Our  feet  lay  toward  the  river  bank,  and 


COMSTOCK'S.  —  A  BUFFALO   HUNT.  101 

our  magnificent,  though  purely  ornamental  fire  made 
the  gigantic  white  trunks  and  grotesque  gnarled 
branches  of  the  cotton- woods  overhanging  the  stream 
dance  and  flicker  like  ghosts  in  a  dream.  I  think  this 
was  one  of  the  noblest  chiaro-oscuro  effects  of  fire-light 
that  I  ever  saw  in  my  life.  Below  us  murmured  the 
river,  repeating  the  sky's  purple  twilight  on  its  smooth 
depths,  and  glinting  with  diamond  sparks  from  our 
flame  on  its  fretful  shallows.  The  air  was  the  perfec- 
tion of  breathableness, — softer,  purer,  clearer  than 
anything  east  of  the  plains  around  Mount  Shasta. 

The  next  morning  we  rejoined  our  companions  just 
in  time  to  cook  our  breakfast  on  the  remains  of  their 
kitchen.  I  began  to  feel  terribly  sick  of  meat,  and, 
in  my  rage  for  vegetables,  broke  my  bowie-knife  dig- 
ging wild  onions.  After  this  exploit,  costing  me  a 
splendid  weapon  irreplaceable  short  of  Denver,  we 
made  a  ragout  of  onions  and  salt  pork,  which  I  can- 
not recommend  to  anybody  living  near  Delmonico's, 
washed  our  dishes  in  the  Republican,  and  turned 
north  again  toward  the  ranch. 

We  reached  Comstock's  about  two  in  the  afternoon, 
with  less  buffalo-meat  than  we  should  have  liked,  but 
an  experience  of  one  of  the  loveliest  and  most  inter- 
esting regions  on  the  Continent;  a  region  which  the 
Pacific  Railroad  will  make  the  most  valuable  farming- 
land  between  St.  Louis  and  California. 


\ 


CHAPTER  III. 

FROM  THE  BUFFALO  COUNTRY  TO  THE  GOLD  MINES. 

ON  the  29th  of  May,  our  party  were  obliged  to 
divide.  We  had  Waited  several  nights  without  find- 
ing a  westward  stage  which  would  contain  us  all. 
Accordingly  two  of  us  stayed  behind,  while  our  two 
friends  squeezed  themselves  into  an  overcrowded 
coach,  where  one  at  least  of  the  passengers  took  it 
as  a  personal  insult,  using  language  unparliamentary 
and  profane.  Hunger  had  promised  to  send  us  on 
an  empty  coach  from  Atchison,  during  the  next  few 
days  ;  for  this  our  friends  were  to  telegraph  when 
they  reached  Kearney. 

I  was  not  sorry  to  stay  with  the  Comstocks  a  lit- 
tle longer.  We  were  both  of  us  charmed  with  their 
original  and  kindly  characters,  and  they  never  tired 
of  hearing  us  talk  about  the  great  East.  Apropos 
of  that,  John  Gilbert  told  me  that  next  year  he  was 
going  east  on  a  visit.  I  gave  him  a  cordial  invitation 
to  come  and  see  me,  when  he  replied  naively,  "  I 
don't  think  I  shall  get  beyond  Chicago."  What  a 
revelation !  How  far  west  must  we  be,  when  going 
to  Chicago  was  going  east !  And  yet  we  were  only 
two  hundred  miles  on  a  road  numbering  more  than 
as  many  thousands. 

From  the  Comstocks  we  learned  more  of  the  social 
condition  of  Kansas  and  Nebraska  than  all  editorials 
and  speeches  had  ever  taught  us  at  the  East.  To  a 


.7 KAN   BAPTISTE  MONCREYIE.     goe  page  104. 


PORTRAIT   OK   COKSTOCK.     See  page  24 


THE  BUFFALO   COUNTRY  TO  THE   GOLD  MINES.    103 

remarkable  extent  this  family  had  kept  the  good  of 
frontier  life,  and  shed  aside  the  evil.  I  regarded 
them  as  in  all  respects  trustworthy  and  unbiased 
historians  of  the  events  of  the  last  few  years ;  yet 
they  revealed  to  me  a  condition  of  affairs  which  was 
appalling.  Nobody  could  suspect  them  of  a  bias 
toward  the  accursed  system  which  had  originally 
caused  all  the  border  troubles ;  so  I  was  obliged  to 
believe  them  when  they  said  that  bushwhacking, 
robbery,  murder,  jayhawking  in  general,  had  been 
committed  under  the  sacred  name  of  Liberty  and  the 
detested  name  of  Slavery  alike.  Border  Ruffianism 
had  spread  far  beyond  its  original  clique.  In  every 
small  settlement  or  settled  region,  the  party  in  power 
for  the  time  had  called  to  its  aid  all  the  means  of  vi- 
olence which  coerced  the  first  Free  State  men.  If  a 
settler  did  not  lend  himself  to  the  tyranny  in  vogue, 
he  was  marked  for  plunder  or  destruction.  Armed 
parties  surrounded  his  house  in  the  night,  brought 
him  out  and  shot  or  hanged  him,  confiscated  his 
goods,  drove  off  his  cattle,  and  sent  his  family  into 
the  bush.  This  was  done  in  the  name  of  the  cause 
most  popular  at  the  time,  and  for  much  of  it  no 
cause  was  responsible.  It  was  mere  organized  pillage 
under  a  convenient  party  name,  and  got  so  lucrative 
that  jayhawking  absorbed  into  its  profession  all  the 
bold,  unscrupulous  spirits  who  spurned  the  slow  re- 
wards of  industry;  and  it  became  as  dangerous  for  a 
hard-working  bond  fide  settler  to  become  a  "suspect," 
as  honest  people  found  it  in  the  French  Reign  of  Ter- 
ror. The  Comstocks  had  seen  men  in  whose  loyalty 
to  the  Union  and  freedom  they  had  as  much  confi- 
dence as  in  their  own,  utterly  broken  up  and  ruined 
by  jay  hawkers,  pretending  to  represent  those  holy 


104      THE  HEART  OF  THE  CONTINENT. 

interests ;  they  had  sheltered  from  the  halter  and  the 
pistol  hunted  acquaintances,  whose  only  crime  was 
the  possession  of  property  which  the  jayhawkers 
found  valuable. 

For  the  last  three  days  of  our  stay  at  Comstock's, 
a  very  interesting  man  was  visiting  there.  Jean 
Baptiste  Moncrevie,  the  Indian  interpreter,  is  sixty- 
eight  years  of  age,  yet  looks  scarcely  over  fifty  ;  full 
of  French  grace,  fire,  and  vivacity,  grafted  with 
American  humor.  He  was  educated  in  Paris,  mar- 
ried, came  over  to  this  country  to  make  his  way  in 
one  of  the  professions,  lost  his  wife  in  her  first  child- 
bed, and  became  insane.  He  recovered  his  sanity 
after  a  protracted  period,  but  the  energy  of  his  life 
was  gone.  He  had  no  further  ambition ;  the  thought 
of  succeeding  in  the  world  was  a  mockery  to  a  man 
who  had  lost  the  world's  highest  success.  To  get 
away  from  old  associations,  he  went  West  with  Audu- 
bon,  and  became  so  well  acquainted  with  frontier  life 
that  at  the  close  of  the  ornithological  tour  he  deter- 
mined to  stay  among  the  Indians.  He  is  now  per- 
fectly conversant  with  six  different  Indian  languages, 
— the  Sioux,  Pawnee,  Arapahoe,  Blackfeet,  Crow,  and 
Flathead.  He  furnished  me  with  some  vocabularies, 
valuable  not  only  in  the  practical,  but  the  philolog- 
ical point  of  view.  All  the  material  which  we  pro- 
cured in  this  specialty,  during  our  entire  tour,  we 
forwarded  to  Mr.  George4  Gibbs,  of  the  Smithsonian, 
whose  book  on  the  Indian  languages  must  only  be 
worthy  of  the  opportunities  he  has  enjoyed,  and  the 
erudition  he  possesses,  to  be  the  most  complete  dic- 
tionary, grammar,  and  comparative  philology  of  sav- 
age speech  ever  issued  in  any  country.  Moncrevie's 
stories  amused  us  much.  I  never  heard  a  man  de- 


THE  BUFFALO   COUNTRY  TO  THE   GOLD  MINES.     105 

scribe  an  Indian  "  soldier-feast "  as  comically  as  he 
did.  For  the  benefit  of  the  uninitiated,  let  me  say 
that  this  happy  banquet  consists  of  a  series  of  the 
most  frightful  messes  which  ever  entered  a  witch 
cauldron.  For  instance,  there  will  be  a  ragout  of 
dog,  flavored  with  mud  and  sole-leather ;  a  soup  of 
lizards,  pig-gristle,  and  wild  onions ;  an  enormous 
salmis  of  old  mule  and  sunflower  leaves.  Your  host 
is  most  generous  with  his  provender.  He  heaps 
your  plate  with  the  nauseous  delicacies  until  you  sit 
aghast.  If  you  cannot  eat  your  portion,  you  are 
technically  said  to  be  "  killed,"  and  have  to  buy  some 
other  convive  to  eat  it  for  you  with  a  valuable  pres- 
ent. One  elastic  Indian  of  long  practice  will  some- 
times eat  two  other  men's  portions  beside  his  own, 
and  feel  no  more  inconvenience  from  them  than  an 
anaconda  from  a  goat  an  nature!.  Moncrev-ie  had 
once  to  pay  the  most  valuable  horse  he  had,  to  get 
his  mess  eaten  by  a  Sioux  brave.  As  these  are  debts 
of  honor,  the  most  capacious  glutton  goes  to  a  sol- 
dier-feast with  all  the  avidity  felt  by  a  gray  Wall 
Street  bull  for  a  "corner"  in  Harlem. 

Nowhere  on  our  travels  did  we  find  better  oppor- 
tunities for  studying  Western  tree-formations  than 
along  the  banks  of  the  Little  Blue.  The  varied 
structure  of  the  cotton-woods  was  a  perpetual  sur- 
prise to  us.  They  seem  by  their  heart-shaped  leaf 
to  be  near  relations  of  the  poplar  family;  but  they 
have  none  of  that  tribe's  stiff,  unyielding  individ- 
uality. The  poplar,  especially  the  Lombardy,  is  the 
Mr.  Dombey  of  our  sylva,  but  there  is  nothing  of 
the  starched-shirt- collar  school  in  the  attitudes  or  ex- 
pressions of  the  cotton-woods.  They  are  protean  in 
their  simulations.  One  whose  butt  we  used  for  our 


106      THE  HEART  OF  THE  CONTINENT. 

rifle-target,  about  forty  rods  from  Comstock's  door, 
passed  for  a  magnificent  white-oak  until  we  got  near 
enough  to  examine  its  foliage ;  and  everywhere  in  the 
neighborhood  these  mimetic  trees  wore  the  mien  of 
the  elm,  the  ash,  or  the  hickory.  Nature  on  the 
Plains,  like  the  poet  Saadi,  has  but  a  limited  vocab- 
ulary, yet  makes  a  wonderfully  polytoned  music 
with  her  scant  material. 

It  was  about  eleven  o'clock  on  the  night  of  May 
30th,  that  we  broke  away  from  the  cordial  grasp  of 
our  friends  and  entertainers,  to  resume  our  places  in 
the  Overland  Coach.  To  give  some  idea  of  the  cheap- 
ness of  board  and  the  generosity  of  soul  existing  in 
the  Comstock  ranch,  I  will  chronicle  that  our  bill 
amounted  to  twenty-five  cents  a  meal  for  the  days 
spent  in-doors,  nothing  at  all  for  our  lodging,  as  lit- 
tle for  the  share  of  transportation  -  and  edibles  which 
we  had  enjoyed  during  our  hunt;  and  that  for  the 
days  elapsing  between  our  return  from  the  Kepub- 
lican  and  our  resumption  of  the  road,  we  could  only 
obtain  the  privilege  of  squaring  our  account  by  de- 
positing the  debt  as  a  concealed  keepsake  in  Frank's 
and  Mary's  hands,  and  running  away  before  they  dis- 
covered what  it  was. 

We  were  fortunate  enough  to  find  our  favorite 
box-seats  unoccupied,  and  mounted  to  them  with 
great  satisfaction,  thus  avoiding  the  (Jreadful  grudge 
which  is  created  in  the  minds  of  a  stageful  of  in- 
sides,  by  new-comers  entering  at  an  inhuman  hour, 
with  &  proposition  to  re-sort  their  heads  and  legs. 

Eor  the  first  forty  miles  our  road  lay  along  the 
Little  Blue,  The  light-and-shade  effects  on  its  dense 
fringe  of  foliage,  and  occasional  glimpses  of  its  glid- 
ing water,  were  well  worthy  of  an  artist's  enthusiasm. 


THE  BUFFALO  COUNTRY  TO  THE  GOLD  MINES.  107 

Every  turn  of  the  road  brought  us  into  some  new 
loveliness :  some  deep  embowered  dell,  scented  with 
the  ethereal  spice  of  the  wild  grape-vine ;  some  lofty 
bluff  leaving  us  just  space  to  pass  by  a  dug-way  be- 
tween it  and  the  river  (one  such  place,  called  the 
Narrows,  awakens  some  anxiety  in  the  breasts  of 
travellers  who  have  not  been  case-hardened  to  dan- 
ger farther  west) ;  some  broad  stretch  of  rolling  plain, 
where  the  distances  were  vague  and  mystical,  —  and 
ours  was  the  only  living  spot  in  the  great  solitude. 

Our  first  driver  told  us  that  Munger,  on  his  way 
back  to  Atchison  from  the  ranch,  had  run  down, 
with  his  buggy,  drawn  by  Nig  and  Ben,  a  pair  of 
young  antelope  kids  a  fortnight  old,  captured  them, 
and  carried  them  home  with  him  in  triumph  !  That 
was  indeed  a  buggy  superior  to  its  birth.  What  tales 
it  will  have  to  relate,  when  it  finally  gets  invalided 
among  the  veteran  stage-coaches  in  that  Chelsea  of 
vehicles,  a  wagon-shed  !  how  their  venerable  doors 
will  open  with  astonishment  at  a  buggy  that  has 
hunted  buffalo  and  captured  antelope  ! 

During  the  night  we  accomplished  three  stations, 
Little  Blue,  Liberty  Farm,  and  Lone  Tree.  We  rode 
at  the  average  Overland  Stage  rate  of  a  little  over 
one  hundred  miles  in  twenty-four  hours.  Our  second 
driver  was  a  fine-looking  young  fellow  who  interested 
us  much.  A  year  before,  he  had  been  at  the  very  bot- 
tom of  the  pit  of  drunkenness,—  as  apparently  hopeless 
a  case  as  existed  on  the  road.  From  that  horror  his 
good  angel  had  brought  him  up  once  .more  to  his  per- 
fect manhood ;  and  now  he  refused  the  proffer  of  liquor 
from  one  of  the  passengers,  with  an  earnest  "  0  no  ! 
no,  I  thank  you,"  which  only  seemed  brusque  to  those 
who  did  not  know  his  history,  and  contained  in  it  the 


108       THE  HEART  OF  THE  CONTINENT. 

significance  of  a  whole  youth  of  misery.  Many  times 
afterward,  on  stage-boxes  between  Nebraska  and  Cal- 
ifornia, I  thought  of  that  handsome  young  face,  hop- 
ing to  Heaven  that  its  frank  brown  eyes  might  be 
beclouded  by  death  before  liquor  should  redim  them. 
He  impressed  me  as  a  soul  whose  inhabiting  devil 
would  be  no  common  fiend.  His  face  was  so  writ- 
ten with  the  possibilities  of  extreme  feeling  that  it 
haunted  one  like  Guide's  "Beatrice." 

It  grew  light  enough,  before  we  reached  the  break- 
fast station  at  Thirty-two  Mile  Creek,  for  us  to  see  at 
wide  distances  apart  several  ranch  houses  and  corrals, 
one  at  least  of  which  was  steadily  inhabited.  This 
appeared  at  our  crossing  of  Pawnee  Creek,  a  shallow 
affluent  of  the  Blue.  Here,  too,  we  found  real  pathos 
in  the  sight  of  a  rudely  inclosed  little  grave-yard, 
containing  one  large  and  one  small  headstone.  Even 
in  this  loneliness  a  man  might  be  left  still  more  alone  ! 

The  country  in  .general  was  as  uninhabited  as  we 
saw  it  about  Comstock's.  Antelope  abounded  on  all 
sides,  scouring  out  of  sight  from  within  easy  rifle-shot 
at  every  turn  of  our  road.  The  day  before,  a  hunter 
had  shot  an  elk  on  the  river  bottom,  but  a  few  miles 
from  Thirty-two  Mile  Creek,  so  large  that  he  had  to 
return  to  his  camp,  and  send  back  a  wagon  for  him. 

The  journey  from  Thirty-two  Mile  Creek  to  Fort 
Kearney  (a  distance  of  thirty-five  miles)  disclosed  to 
us  increasing  barrenness  in  the  soil,  accompanied  by 
a  corresponding  change  in  the  zone  of  the  flora.  Cac- 
tuses became  a  prominent  feature  on  all  the  hot  sand 
dunes ;  a  peculiar  desert  species  of  the  Asclepias  here 
and  there  began  showing  itself;  and  wherever  the 
arid  ground  yielded  any  herbage,  the  succulent  grass 
of  the  Little  Blue  region  was  replaced  by  the  short, 


THE  BUFFALO  COUNTRY  TO  THE  GOLD  MIKES.  109 

wiry  gramma.  This  little  plant  is  the  main  support 
of  the  herds  along  the  Platte.  Both  the  emigrant 
cattle  and  the  buffaloes  are  very  fond  of  it,  though 
their  attachment  seems  rather  eccentric  to  anybody 
who  has  ever  examined  it.  If  you  can  imagine  an 
inventive  genius  who  had  discovered  a  method  of 
making  an  article  for  army  rations,  called  "  Desiccated 
Corkscrews,"  his  products  would  be  an  approximate 
imitation  of  the  gramma.  If  I  ever  felt  like  decrying 
that  intolerable  old  fallacy  to  the  effect  that  figures 
don't  lie,  it  was  when  I  heard  a  ranchman  mention 
the  avoirdupois  of  an  ox  who  had  fed  on  gramma  en- 
tirely. How  it  can  be  nutritive,  needs  chemistry  to 
show ;  that  it  is  so,  all  the  plainsmen  aver,  and  their 
cattle  seem  to  prove  it. 

The  ground  rose  perceptibly  between  breakfast  and 
Fort  Kearney.  We  climbed  several  of  the  loftiest 
and  longest  hills  we  had  seen  since  leaving  St.  Louis. 
About  twenty  miles  east  of  the  fort,  we  seemed  to 
reach  the  top  of  a  new  terrace,  and  thenceforward 
rode  nearly  all  the  way  on  a  level  sand-plain,  ex- 
tremely barren,  very  hot  and  dusty,  and  quite  distress- 
ing to  the  horses.  This  plain  was  interspersed  with 
bare  sand-hillocks  from  five  to  twenty  feet  high,  mak- 
ing it  look  as  if  it  were  the  now  abandoned  dumping- 
ground  of  some  pre-Adamic  race  of  genii,  who  fol- 
lowed the  dustman's  trade  for  the  rest  of  the  solar 
system,  and  came  to  this  world  to  unload.  Beyond 
the  hillocks,  perhaps  a  distance  of  eight  miles  south- 
erly, rose  a  much  higher  range  of  equally  barren 
bluffs,  giving  us,  for  the  first  time  in  our  journey,  a 
sensation  of  mountain  scenery,  and,  so  to  speak,  strik- 
ing the  resolving  chords  between  the  low  plains  of 
Kansas  and  the  high  plateaus  of  the  Rocky  Mountain 


110       THE  HEART  OF  THE  CONTINENT. 

region,  whither  we  were  tending.  On  our  northern 
hand,  about  fifteen  miles  from  the  fort,  we  saw  for 
the  first  time  bounding  our  horizon  the  fringe  of  trees 
along  the  Platte.  At  first  sight  this  river  appeared 
as  wide  as  the  Hudson  at  Tappan  Zee,  or  the  St.  John's 
below  Pilatka.  Its  further  banks  were  enveloped  in 
a  misty  veil,  and  looked  languidly  soft,  like  far  islands 
seen  through  tropical  fog.  Atmospheric  distance 
never  deceived  so  completely.  The  charming  gran- 
deur and  tenderness  of  scale  on  which  this  view 
seemed  constructed,  were  delusions  of  the  mirage. 
Hot  sun  and  mirroring  sand  had  wrought  up  the 
scanty  materials  of  the  stream  into  a  dream  of  beauty 
which  had  no  geometric  reasons.  Our  best  dreams  of 
beauty  are  generally  of  that  sort,  belonging  to  the 
soul,  and  not  to  the  intellect.  We  hated  to  have  this 
vision  disturbed  by  Gradgrind  measurements  of  space. 
"  If  this  were  a  delusion,  let  us  dream  on  !"  I  must 
confess  that  this  region  of  mirage  is  almost  the  only 
place,  till  one  reaches  the  Platte's  ice-cold  canon,  in 
the  mountains  of  Colorado,  where  the  river  exerts 
any  fascination  on  the  tourist.  It  will  presently  lose 
the  assistance  of  mirage  and  imagination,  and  turn  out 
the  most  miserably  uninteresting  and  feeble-minded 
stream  to  be  found  on  the  continent.  If  it  were  com- 
pressed into  a  single  bed,  instead  of  being  vaguely 
dispersed  about  great  and  small  islands,  in  all  sorts 
of  intricate  channels,  it  would  approach  the  size  of 
the  Oswego  Kiver  at  the  city  of  that  name. 

About  two  o'clock,  we  passed  a  very  picturesque 
party  of  Germans  going  to  Oregon.  They  had  a  large 
herd  of  cattle  and  fifty  wagons,  mostly  drawn  by  oxen, 
though  some  of  the  more  prosperous  "  outfits  "  were 
attached  to  horses  or  mules.  The  people  themselves 


THE  BUFFALO   COUNTRY  TO   THE   GOLD  MINES.    Ill 

represented  the  better  class  of  Prussian  or  North  Ger- 
man peasantry.  A  number  of  strapping  teamsters,  in 
gay  costumes,  appeared  like  Westphalians.  Some  of 
them  wore  canary  shirts  and  blue  pantaloons ;  with 
these  were  intermingled  blouses  of  claret,  rich  warm 
brown,  and  the  most  vivid  red.  All  the  women  and 
children  had  some  positive  color  about  them,  if  it  only 
amounted  to  a  knot  of  ribbons,  or  the  glimpse  of  a 
petticoat.  I  never  saw  so  many  bright  and  comely 
faces  in  'an  emigrant  train.  One  real  little  beauty, 
who  showed  the  typical  German  blonde  through  all 
her  tan,  peered  out  of  one  great  canvas  wagon  cover, 
like  a  baby  under  the  bonnet  of  the  Shaker  giantess, 
and  coqueted  for  a  moment  with  us  from  a  pair  of 
wicked-innocent  blue  eyes,  drawing  back,  when  the 
driver  stared  at  her,  in  nicely  simulated  confusion. 
Several  old  women,  of  less  than  the  usual  anile  hid- 
eousness  of  the  German  Bauerinn,  were  trudging 
along  the  road  with  the  teamsters,  in  short  blue  pet- 
ticoats and  everlasting  shoes;  partly  to  unbend  their 
joints,  as  was  evident  from  the  pastime  alacrity  of 
their  gait,  and  partly  to  oversee  a  crowd  of  children 
who  were  hunting  green  grass  with  sickles,  and  con- 
veying their  scanty  harvest  to  the  cattle  by  handfuls 
at  a  time.  In  the  wagons  all  manner  of  domestic 
bliss  was  going  on.  A  young  teamster,  whose  turn  it 
was  to  ride,  sat  smoking  a  pipe  and  wooing  his  bashful 
dear,  thus  uniting  business  and  pleasure  in  an  emi- 
nent degree,  under  the  shadow  of  a  great  wagon 
top,  and  on  a  barrel  of  mess  pork.  Many  mothers 
were  on  front  seats,  nursing  their  babies  in  the  inno- 
cent unconsciousness  of  Eve.  Old  men  lay  asleep 
on  bales  of  bedding,  with  their  horn  spectacles  still 
astride  the  nose;  old  women,  with  similar  aids,  read 


112      THE  HEART  OF  THE  CONTINENT. 

great  books  of  theoretical  religion,  or  knitted  stock- 
ings of  the  practical  kind.  Every  wagon  was  a  gem 
of  an  interior  such  as  no  Fleming  ever  put  on  can- 
vas, and  every  group  a  genre  piece  for  Bough  ton. 
The  whole  picture  of  the  train  was  such  a  delight  in 
form,  color,  and  spirit  that  I  could  have  lingered  near 
it  all  the  way  to  Kearney. 

About  three  o'clock  we  arrived  at  Fort  Kearney, 
and  again  halted.  The  comparatively  light-loaded 
stage  which  Hunger  had  kindly  promised  to*  send  on 
to  us,  would  arrive  the  next  day.  After  dinner  at  the 
Overland  station,  we  walked  over  to  the  fort,  which 
is  a  mere  inclosure  of  boards,  containing  several  bar- 
rack buildings,  and  stores  belonging  to  the  trading- 
post.  It  is  not  intended  to  resist  assault,  but  would 
probably  furnish  sufficient  protection  to  settlers  who 
might  flee  to  it  for  asylum,  from  the  Indian  mode  of 
warfare. 

Lieutenant  Davis,  then  in  command  of  a  garrison 
of  about  a  hundred  Colorado  troops,  received  us  very 
politely,  and  asked  us  to  make  the  fort  our  head-quar- 
ters. In  the  yard  of  his  house  we  found  a  pair  of 
nice  little  buffalo  calves,  which  his  men  had  captured 
in  their  last  expedition  against  the  Sioux.  With  the 
engravings  before  us,  it  is  needless  to  remark  how 
strong  is  their  resemblance  to  the  calf  of  our  domes- 
tic cow,  at  the  same  age.  These  are  supposed  to  be 
about  a  month  old.  Our  artist  held  two  seances  with 
the  little  creatures  on  the  afternoon  of  our  arrival 
and  the  next  morning,  transferring  them  to  canvas  in 
every  variety  of  attitude,  and  getting  their  animus 
and  typical  distinctions  as  well  by  heart  as  he  had 
succeeded  in  doing  with  their  belligerent  sires.  They 
are  stupid  little  creatures,  with  the  usual  vituline 


THE  BUFFALO   COUNTRY  TO  THE  GOLD  MINES.    113 

concentration  of  sense  in  their  mouths  and  noses,  and 
no  very  clear  idea  of  the  system  on  which  their  legs 
were  planned;  but  they  have  a  slight  suggestion  of 
their  future  hump,  and  a  certain  spunkiness  of  de- 
meanor, which,  to  the  close  observer,  bound  them  off 
from  the  common  calf.  Their  coats,  too,  are  rougher 
than  his,  and  show  symptoms  of  coming  curl ;  but 
they  are  of  a  reddish-brown  color,  which  is  not  un- 
common in  our  barn-yards. 

Punctually  at  the  expected  time,  our  stage  came 
along,  and,  to  our  great  satisfaction,  contained  only  a 
couple  of  passengers.  Our  dreams  of  luxurious  space 
were  rudely  disturbed  by  the  appearance,  while  we 
were  dining,  of  the  coach  from  Omaha,  which  here 
intersects  the  main  Overland  road,  with  a  cargo  of 
passengers  mostly  intending  to  keep  on  further  west, 
and  clamorous  for  their  shares  in  our  vehicle.  After 
protracted  negotiation,  we  compromised  by  receiving 
two  of  the  new  lot,  who,  with  our  party  of  four  and 
the  original  occupants,  crowded  us  into  wretchedly 
tight  quarters. 

For  the  thirty-six  miles  to  Plum  Creek  station,  the 
road  continued  to  run  through  a  country  of  only  less 
aridity  than  preceded  our  entrance  to  Fort  Kearney. 
The  only  spots  of  brightness  on  the  dreary  waste  of 
sand  and  gramma  were  the  crimson  flowers  of  the 
ground-poppy,  which  afford  such  diversified  beauty 
to  the  Plains  about  the  Little  Blue,  and  which  here 
fought  for  a  bare  existence  with  the  thickening 
myriads  of  cacti,  bursting  up  between  the  spikes 
and  saffron-colored  blossoms  of  the  latter,  like  flames 
twinkling  among  pale  cinders. 

Again  we  went  pattering  out  into  the  twilight,  be- 
hind fresh  relays.  About  nine  o'clock,  the  moon  rose 


114       THE  HEART  OF  THE  CONTINENT. 

among  a  swarm  of  small  straggling  clouds.  About 
eight  miles  from  Plum  Creek,  her  light  fell  on  a  broad 
encampment  of  Sioux,  silvering  the  dingy  skins  and 
occasional  canvas  of  the  smoky  it-pis  into  something 
like  the  Fenimore  Cooper  romance  of  Indian  life. 
I  could  not  help  thinking  that  part  of  this  illusion 
was  owing  to  the  early  habits  of  the  savage,  which 
prevented  any  Indians  from  being  in  sight.  It  would 
take  a  good  deal  of  moonlight  to  make  an  Indian  look 
romantic.  About  the  tents  were  a  herd  of  pictur- 
esque, ewe-necked  horses,  feeding  at  their  ease  on  the 
short,  dry  herbage,  and  showing  their  sides,  mottled 
with  the  spots  which  characterize  what  we  at  the 
East  call  a  "  circus-horse,"  —  still  odder  in  the  broad 
moonlight. 

Just  as  we  passed  the  last  tent,  a  strange  figure 
burst  through  the  narrow  slit  in  it  used  as  a  doorway, 
and  hailed  our  driver,  who  stopped  for  him,  and  took 
him  on  the  box.  He  wore  a  handsome  buckskin 
hunting-blouse,  profusely  embroidered  and  dangling 
with  leather  tags,  a  low  slouch  hat,  and  a  beaded  belt, 
from  which  peeped  the  butt  of  a  six-shooter.  His 
complexion  was  so  bronzed,  and  his  hair  so  long  and 
black,  that  until  I  had  looked  him  full  in  the  face,  and 
heard  him  speak,  I  took  him  for  a  Sioux.  He  was  a 
white  man,  —  or  white  as  a  man  can  be  who  has  lived 
much  with  the  Indians  of  the  Plains,  —  and  had  in 
his  countenance  one  of  the  most  singular  mixtures 
of  good-fellowship  and  desperadoism  that  I  ever  saw. 
I  should  have  liked  to  see  him  on  my  side  in  a  Plains 
fight,  and  been  sorry  to  think  he  was  on  the  other ; 
but  there  was  an  lago  quality  in  his  restless  black 
eyes  and  the  iciness  of  his  laugh,  which  must  have 
made  any  student  of  human  nature  uncomfortable 


THE  BUFFALO   COUNTRY  TO  THE   GOLD  MINES.    115 

in  a  protracted  acquaintance  with  him  among  lonely 
surroundings. 

About  eleven  o'clock,  when  we  were  about  half  a 
mile  from  the  station  called  Willow  Island,  the  moon 
became  as  suddenly  obscured  as  if  she  had  been  put 
out  with  an  extinguisher.  The  clouds  grew  inky 
black,  and  simultaneously  the  wind  rose  to  a  tempest. 
I  never  saw  in  my  life  such  dispatch  in  getting  up  a 
storm.  Another  minute,  and  the  clouds  were  pelting 
down  on  us  hailstones  as  large  as  musket-balls.  The 
mules  became  frightened,  and  plunged  furiously.  It 
was  too  black  to  see  the  heads  of  the  leaders,  but 
there  was  nothing  to  be  done  except  advance;  so  by 
coaxing,  cursing,  and  whipping,  the  driver  finally 
persuaded  the  team  to  take  us  as  far  as  the  station. 
We  jumped  down  from  the  box,  and  in  the  dark,  after 
imminent  danger  from  the  hoofs  of  the  madly  kicking 
wheel-mules,  managed  to  unhook  the  traces  instead  of 
cutting  them,  as  we  had  contemplated  the  necessity 
of  doing.  It  will  seem  almost  incredible  to  anybody 
who  has  not  seen  a  hailstorm  on  the  Platte ;  but  after 
we  had  got  the  team  loose,  and  were  standing  by  their 
heads,  while  the  inside  passengers  used  up  half  a  box 
of  matches  in  getting  the  lanterns  lighted,  the  stage 
heavy  with  mails,  seven  inside  passengers,  and  all  their 
baggage,  was  forcibly  blown  back  by  the  wind  a  dis- 
tance of  several  yards.  I  could  compare  its  effect  on 
myself  only  to  having  a  stable  door  pressed  steadily 
against  my  person ;  and  if  I  had  not  held  on  by  one 
of  the  most  obstinate  of  nature's  animals,  I  should 
have  been  sent  scurrying  out  of  sight  in  the  direction 
of  Fort  Kearney. 

Just  as  our  patience  began  to  give  out  under  the 
buffets  of  the  wind  and  the  sound  whipping  of  the 


116       THE  HEART  OF  THE  CONTINENT. 

hail,  our  friend  in  the  buckskin  made  his  voice  heard 
through  the  roar,  and  a  stable-keeper  appeared  with 
a  light,  which  was  instantly  put  out.  By  this  time 
our  lanterns  were  lighted,  and  we  managed  to  get 
our  mules  into  their  stalls  without  any  accident  more 
serious  than  a  graze  on  one  of  the  shins  belonging  to 
our  driver. 

It  was  quite  out  of  reason  to  attempt  going  on 
in  such  a  tempest.  Accordingly  we  let  our  relays 
stay  in  the  stable,  and  went  back  to  tell  the  insides, 
penned  into  darkness  and  uncertainty  by  tightly  but- 
toned carriage  leathers,  that  we  had  concluded,  after 
the  manner  of  the  Connecticut  Kiver  mate,  "  to  an- 
chor our  end  of  the  schooner."  This  seemed  to  meet 
as  much  approbation  as  they  had  to  expend  upon 
anything  under  the  circumstances.  They  resigned 
themselves  to  an  upright  sleep  against  the  straps  and 
cushions,  while  we,  who  had  still  enough  wakefulness 
in  our  legs  to  hunt  up  something  better,  betook  our- 
selves to  the  stable,  and  lay  down  on  clean  straw  in 
some  empty  stalls.  I  blessed  the  hailstorm  which  was 
pelting  outside,  for  it  had  given  me  a  chance  to 
stretch  myself.  Dearest  opportunity  to  the  over- 
lander  !  I  have  known  hours  when  I  speculated 
curiously  on  the  torture  of  the  rack,  and  wondered 
how  the  old  martyrs  could  have  found  it  so  disagree- 
able. Certainly  it  seemed  to  me  that  any  amount 
of  relaxation  could  not  be  so  painful  as  that  sense  of 
being  shortened  up,  driven  in,  and  clinched  on  the 
other  side,  which  results  from  twenty-four  hours'  con- 
stancy to  a  bent  position.  I  accordingly  welcomed 
the  chance  of  extending  myself  on  the  Willow  Island 
straw,  with  a  delight  which  would  have  scarcely  been 
lessened,  had  the  bare  boards  been  substituted  as  a 
lying-place. 


THE  BUFFALO  COUNTRY  TO  THE  GOLD  MINES.  117 

About  three  o'clock  in  the  morning  I  was  awak- 
ened by  a  tumbling  and  groaning  in  the  next  stall 
to  mine.  I  rose,  and  felt  my  way  to  the  sufferer, 
thinking  that  he  had  a  fit.  In  the  dark  I  put  out 
my  hand,  and  touched  a  leathern  fringe.  It  belonged 
to  our  new  passenger.  He  continued  to  toss  and 
twist;  he  got  into  deadly  combat  with  the  wisps  of 
straw  under  him ;  I  heard  him  send  home  three  or 
four  well-meant  blows  with  his  fist  against  the  side 
of  the  stall,  and  then  he  muttered  in  a  voice  of  hor- 
ror, "  Murder  !  murder  !  0  God,  murder !  " 

I  caught  him  by  the  shoulder,  and  shook  him 
soundly.  As  he  woke,  he  felt  for  his  pistol.  I  held 
his  hand,  and  explained  the  facts  of  the  case.  "  0 
thank  you  !  "  said  he;  "I  sometimes  have  the  night- 
mare very  badly,  and  then  I  remember, —  0  such  disa- 
greeable things  —  everything  in  fact  that  I  ever  saw 
in  my  life." 

It  was  broad  daylight  when  I  woke  the  second 
time.  My  friend  of  the  next  stall  had  disappeared, 
and  did  not  join  us  when  we  again  put  ourselves  en 
route.  The  hail  had  ceased,  but  had  left  a  gray, 
greasy,  despondent  heaven,  and  a  sullen,  sobbing 
wind.  We  rode  through  a  sterile  country,  with 
distant  bluffs  of  dun  sand  bounding  our  plain  on 
either  side,  till  at  Midway  Station  we  stopped  for 
breakfast. 

One  of  the  greatest  puzzles  of  the  Plains  is  their 
nomenclature.  You  stop  at  stations  called  something 
"  Spring,"  and  look  in  vain  for  anything  to  drink  but 
stagnant  water.  When  you  come  to  anything  "  Lake," 
you  are  nearly  sure  to  find  no  expanse  a  pig  could  wal- 
low in.  If  you  discovered  a  station  named  Brown's, 
you  might  be  very  sure  that  no  one  had  ever  lived 


118      THE  HEART  OF  THE  CONTINENT. " 

there  but  a  family  of  Johnsons ;  and  there  is  no  bet- 
ter Western  reason  for  calling  a  station  Pratt's  Hill 
than  because  it  is  a  hollow  occupied  by  Joneses. 

We  reached  Cottonwood  at  dinner-time,  but  our 
previous  experience  gave  us  no  encouragement  to 
alight.  We  satisfied  appetite  with  canned  peaches, 
hard  tack,  and  that  charmingly  portable  little  fish 
which  so  invariably  accompanies  Western  immigra- 
tion that  its  empty  tin  coffins  are  seen  scattered 
around  every  station  door ;  and  the  name  for  a  spin- 
dling little  fellow,  whom  the  plainsman  does  not  wish 
to  compliment,  is  "You  Sardine." 

The  country  around  Cottonwood  is  more  undulat- 
ing than  any  we  had  seen  since  leaving  Comstock's. 
For  miles  both  east  and  west  of  it,  we  continually 
climbed  and  descended  hills,  and  passed  through  a 
series  of  sand  canons,  beginning  to  assume  the  typ- 
ical look  of  the  mountain  galleries  further  west.  We 
observed  projecting  from  the  side  of 'one  of  these, 
the  first  limestone  outcrop  we  had  noticed  west  of 
the  Missouri  Kiver. 

Just  west  of  Cottonwood,  the  Platte  Kiver  is 
formed  by  the  junction  of  its  north  and  south  forks. 
In  the  neighborhood  of  the  confluence,  the  land  be- 
gins rising  westward  perceptibly.  About  ten  miles 
from  Cottonwood,  I  got  my  first  sensation  of  ascent 
toward  the  Kocky  Mountains.  There  was  a  solid, 
under-braced  look  in  the  hills,  a  firm,  resonant  qual- 
ity to  the  road,  which  did  not  belong  to  alluvial 
bluffs.  I  felt  as  if  I  were  standing  on  the  first  fold 
of  the  old  fire-serpent,  who  ages  ago  wriggled  him- 
self up  under  the  crust,  and  protruded  his  flaming 
crest  in  the  form  of  the  Rocky  Mountain  summit. 
We  continued  passing  over  extensive  undulations  all 


THE  BUFFALO  COUNTRY  TO  THE   GOLD  MINES.     119 

that  afternoon,  though  the  harder  formations  made 
no  visible  outcrop. 

It  was  just  after  sunset  when  we  ascended  a  con- 
siderable elevation  to  the  station  of  Fremont  Springs, 
29  miles  west  of  Cottonwood  and  379  from  Atchison. 
We  were  now  close  beside  the  South  Fork  of  Platte, 
and  thenceforward  to  Denver,  a  distance  of  274  miles, 
were  hardly  ever  out  of  its  sight.  We  stopped  here 
to  change  horses,  and  take  delicious  draughts  from 
the  finest  spring  between  the  Missouri  Kiver  and 
the  Rocky  Mountain  snow-peaks.  We  found  it  care- 
fully enshrined,  as  if  it  were  a  Greek  god ;  for  a 
clear,  cold,  living  fountain  may  well  demand  apoth- 
eosis at  the  lips  which  have  cooled  their  fever  in  it 
in  the  midst  of  the  journey  beside  those  stagnant 
pools  and  that  dull,  creeping,  muddy  river,  which  are 
the  lot  of  every  passenger  across  the  Plains.  The 
station-keeper  was  faithful  to  his  precious  trust ;  and 
the  crystal  water  was  so  well  protected  under  a  lit- 
tle house  of  boards,  that  neither  sun  could  heat  nor 
impurities  sully  a  single  ripple  of  its  ceaseless  gayety. 
It  was  like  a  baby's  soul  cradled  in  from  the  world's 
evil;  a  joy  without  reaction,  an  abandon  without 
danger.  It  sang  temperance  lectures  without  know- 
ing it,  inspired  in  its  sleep.  It  was  a  homily  on  good 
living,  a  parable  of  pure-heartedness ;  without  didac- 
ticism going  straight  to  the  point.  People  with  flat 
flasks  in  their  breast-pockets  felt  disgusted  at  them, 
and,  for  miles  after  we  left  the  spring,  could  not  bear 
to  take  its  taste  out  of  their  mouths. 

We  bade  adieu  to  the  beautiful  fountain  and  the 
little  lakes  into  which  it  ran  on  its  way  to  the  Platte, 
all  alive  with  wild  ducks,  and  mirroring  the  exquisite 
pink  and  salmon  hues  of  a  beautiful  sunset.  We  rode 


120      THE  HEART  OF  THE  CONTINENT. 

on  twenty-five  miles  further,  to  Alkali  Lake,  where 
sleep  so  thoroughly  overpowered  me  that  instead  of 
going  into  the  station  to  take  an  Overland  supper,  I 
threw  myself  down  on  the  stable  straw,  and  slept  a 
sleep  like  death,  until  the  driver  awakened  me  by 
protracted  shaking.  The  sensation  of  having  to  get 
up  and  go  on  again,  was  one  of  the  most  miserable  I 
ever  knew.  After  all  our  experience,  I  could  not 
learn  the  trick  of  sleeping  upright  in  the  stage.  I 
kept  on  the  box,  and  my  whole  nature  fought  slum- 
ber as  if  it  were  a  disease.  Nor  did  I  ever  learn ;  and 
but  for  the  necessity  of  the  case  summoning  up  all 
the  Yankee  ingenuity  which  was  in  me,  I  believe  my 
comparatively  uninitiated  constitution  would  have 
given  out  before  I  got  to  Denver. 

I  may  say,  in  passing,  that  Alkali  Lake  was  one  of 
those  places,  now  growing  more  frequent,  where  salts 
of  soda  and  potash  exist  in  nearly  saturated  solution 
with  stagnant  water,  or  occasional  springs,  in  shallow 
basins  along  the  banks  of  the  Platte.  The  Platte  it- 
self is  not  alkaline ;  yet  where  the  trail  runs  at  any 
distance  from  it,  emigrant  cattle  often  suffer  so  much 
from  thirst,  that  unless  great  watchfulness  is  used, 
they  temporarily  satiate  themselves  at  the  pools  be- 
fore they  can  be  driven  to  the  river,  producing  a  dis- 
ease of  the  stomach  and  intestines,  which  carries  off 
multitudes  of  them  every  summer.  The  entire  road 
along  the  South  Fork  is  strewn  with  bleaching  heads, 
whole  skeletons,  and  putrefying  carcasses,  which  mark 
the  effects  of  this  malady,  heat,  and  overdriving.  As 
for  the  human  passenger,  though  in  most  cases  his 
caution  prevents  him  from  an  injurious  gratification 
of  his  thirst,  he  still  suffers  intensely  from  the  very 
inhalation  of  the  air  carrying  alkaline  particles.  Few 


THE  BUFFALO   COUNTRY  TO   THE   GOLD  MINES.    121 

manias,  it  seems  to  me,  were  ever  more  intense  than 
my  longing  for  pickles,  lemons,  tamarinds,  vinegar, 
anything  which  could  correct  the  alkaline  excess  in 
my  blood.  The  rest  of  us  suffered  nearly  as  much; 
and  we  found  that  the  acid  stores  which  we  had  used 
the  precaution  to  bring  from  the  Missouri  River  were, 
as  long  as  they  lasted,  the  most  invaluable  portion  of 
our  commissariat.  At  times  I  have  ridden  for  twenty 
miles  in  a  state  of  absolute  wretchedness,  with  the  taste 
of  soda  crusting  my  entire  mouth  and  throat  as  per- 
ceptibly as  if  I  had  just  taken  a  teaspoonful  of  the 
commercial  article.  To  the  traveller  on  this  part 
of  the  Platte,  canned  fruit,  the  sourer  the  better,  is 
an  absolutely  indispensable  portion  of  his  outfit. 

The  use  of  that  word  "  outfit,"  is  curiously  broad 
upon  the  Plains.  It  means  as  many  things  as  the  Ital- 
ian "roba,"  or  the  French  "chose."  It  may  seem  a 
very  natural  amplification  of  significance  that  this 
term,  originally  taken  from  an  emigrant's  preparation 
for  the  road,  should  come  to  be  applied  to  a  suit  of 
clothes,  or  even  the  ranch  which  a  man  had  put 
under  cultivation.  But  it  is  rather  amusing  to  hear 
a  Durham  bull  referred  to  as  having  rather  a  short 
outfit  of  horns;  a  mother  threatening  a  refractory 
child  with  the  worst  outfit  he  ever  got  in  his  life  ; 
or  a  stage-driver  saying  that  he  has  a  big  outfit  of 
passengers.  I  was  still  more  interested  to  have  a 
man  in  Colorado  tell  me  of  a  friend  of  his  who  had 
been  living  among  the  Indians,  and  had  come  home 
"  with  just  the  prettiest  outfit  of  small-pox  that  he 


ever  see." 


The  moon  rose  late,  and  was  very  light.  At  any 
other  time  I  might  cheerfully  have  sat  up  with  her. 
In  my  present  state  of  feeling,  I  wondered  how  poets 


122      THE  HEART  OF  THE  CONTINENT. 

could  ever  have  lingered  out  of  bed  long  enough  to 
write  about  her.  A  pumpkin  cart  full  of  moons,  rein- 
forced by  a  Barnum's  museum  of  nightingales,  would 
not  have  been  the  least  inducement  to  a  man  in  my 
situation.  We  emerged  from  the  hilly  country  we 
had  been  travelling  since  the  middle  of  the  afternoon, 
and  came  out  upon  a  sterile-looking  plain  of  sand  and 
buffalo-grass,  which  resembled  the  country  about  Fort 
Kearney.  It  was  after  midnight  when  we  reached 
Diamond  Springs,  a  station  four  hundred  and  twenty- 
seven  miles  from  Atchison,  and  another  of  the  topo- 
graphical misnomers  before  referred  to,  possessing,  so 
far  as  I  could  discover,  as  little  that  was  valuable  in 
the  way  of  springs  as  of  diamonds. 

It  had,  however,  its  uses  to  me.  It  meant  bed.  My 
mind  was  made  up,  that  is  to  say,  what  mind  I  had 
left.  It  all  rallied  to  the  final  support  of  my  life's 
now  one  remaining  idea.  I  jumped  down  from  the 
box,  stuck  my  head  inside  the  leathers,  and  woke  my 
friends  from  the  miserable  cat-nap  they  were  indulg- 
ing, to  bid  them  good-night  till  we  met  in  Denver. 
They  were  too  sleepy  to  be  much  surprised,  and  plead 
with  great  moderation  for  my  continuance  on  the 
vehicle  of  torture.  As  for  myself,  I  did  not  wait  to 
see  the  horses  change,  but  tumbled  as  well  as  I  was 
able  into  the  station-house,  and  was  stretched  on  a 
bunk  under  my  camp-blankets  beside  a  sleeping  sta- 
ble-keeper before  the  wheels  rolled  away. 

It  was  eight  o'clock  in  the  morning  before  I  awoke. 
I  think  I  never  slept  so  much  or  of  so  excellent  a 
quality  in  the  same  time.  I  was  a  new  man  when  I 
stood  on  my  feet,  and  the  idea  of  breakfast  began  to 
dawn  in  on  me  like  a  dissolving  view,  replacing  that 
of  bed. 


THE  BUFFALO   COUNTRY   TO   THE   GOLD  MINES.       123 

After  breakfast,  which  was  made  a  little  more  lux- 
urious than  the  usual  Overland  meal  by  the  addition 
of  some  very  nice  Indian  meal  flapjacks,  I  posted  up 
my  journal,  and  then  went  forth  to  survey  the  land. 
Trenck  amused  himself  with  spiders,  and  in  "  Le  der- 
nier Jour  d'un  Condamne  "  much  food  for  meditation 
existed  within  four  stone  walls.  The  human  eye  is  a 
wonderfully  adjustable  instrument,  becoming  a  tele- 
scope for  broad  generalizations,  and  a  microscope  for 
details.  I  brought  mine  to  the  latter  focus,  and  went 
hunting  for  objects  of  interest  over  a  tract  which 
more  perfectly  represented  Platitude  and  Inanity,  re- 
duced to  their  geographical  terms,  than  anything  east 
of  the  Goshoot  Desert. 

I  dwell  on  this  Thohu  Ya-vohu  a  little  longer  be- 
cause, if  I  can  at  all  approach  its  painting  in  words, 
I  shall  have  succeeded  in  conveying  to  my  readers 
an  idea  of  the  sand  and  gramma  plains  skirting  the 
South  Platte,  better  than  any  which  could  be  ren- 
dered by  an  engraving. 

I  emerge  from  a  one-story  house  of  logs,  fifty  feet 
long,  fifteen  broad,  twenty  feet  to  the  roof-peak.  It 
has  no  pretense  of  a  fence,  but  a  corral  about  a  hun- 
dred feet  west  incloses  a  barn  and  two  company  sta- 
bles. 

In  front  of  me  stretches  a  waste  of  sand,  midway 
in  color  between  an  ash-heap  and  the  Kockaway 
Beach,  inimitably  flat  to  the  east  and  west,  bounded 
on  the  southern  horizon  by  a  range  of  equally  gloomy 
bluffs,  which  may  be  six  miles  off,  and  a  hundred  feet 
high.  In  all  the  view  is  no  tree,  no  vegetation  of  any 
kind  which  a  grown  man  would  not  have  to  stoop  to 
touch,  no  living  thing  or  sign  of  any ;  for  the  very 
antelope,  which  usually  put  a  locomotive  spot  of  in- 


124       THE  HEART  OF  THE  CONTINENT. 

terest  somewhere  on  such  voids,  had  retired  out  of 
sight  into  the  ravines  of  the  bluff.  Behind  me,  a 
hundred  steps  to  the  north,  crept  the  Platte  River, 
here  apparently  confined  to  a  single  channel  about 
three  hundred  yards  wide.  It  sneaks  along  between 
low  banks,  like  an  assassin  river  going  to  drown  some- 
body. It  does  not  woo  or  cajole ;  it  is  a  murderer 
who  has  lived  past  the  arts  of  fascination ;  a  cruel 
courtesan,  old,  wrinkled,  hateful,  too  life-weary  to 
think  of  pleasing,  yet  loving  to  kill.  And  it  has 
killed.  It  has  proffered  fords,  and  given  quicksands ; 
it  has  engulfed  in  its  treacherous  bottom  horse,  rider, 
wagon,  herd,  all  that  was  trusted  to  it.  Fascinated 
by  its  ugliness  and  the  story  of  its  crimes,  I  come 
close  to  its  edge.  The  oozy  paste  of  loam  which 
banks  it  curves  glibly  away  from  under  my  feet,  and 
I  am  in  the  water  before  I  know  it.  It  is  well  I  have 
not  slipped  off  in  a  dark  night,  or  how  the  greasy 
mud  and  the  dribbling  sand  would  toy  with  my  fin- 
gers, and  let  me  slip  easily  away !  I  scramble  up  the 
bank  by  main  force  with  a  shudder.  I  was  longing 
for  a  bath — had  meant  to  try  the  Platte,  though  the 
ranchmen  had  informed  me  that  it  was  only  knee- 
deep,  save  in  holes  ;  but  I  gave  up  the  idea  on  look- 
ing at  that  water-fiend,  a  Lorelei,  with  all  her  treach- 
ery remaining,  and  all  her  graces  gone. 

There  is  another  reason  why  I  should  not  go  in. 
Across  the  desert  waste  from  the  southerly  bluffs  a 
torrid  wind  is  blowing  ten  knots  an  hour.  It  is  like 
a  hot  blast  of  the  Cyclops'  furnace  escaping  above 
ground.  It  comes  so  freighted  with  microscopic  sand- 
grains  that  it  is  not  as  much  the  old  school  definition 
of  wind — "air,"  as  it  is  earth  "in  motion."  I  have 
been  out  five  minutes,  and  there  is  not  a  pore  of  my 


THE  BUFFALO  COUNTRY  TO  THE  GOLD  MINES.  125 

body  which  it  has  not  stopped.  I  feel  dry  and  caustic, 
a  sort  of  mineral  deposit  rather  than  a  fleshly  man. 
If  I  went  into  the  Platte,  I  should  be  stuccoed  like  a 
cheap  country  seat  before  I  could  use  a  towel.  The 
river,  too,  is  as  bad  as  the  air.  It  is  a  saturated  solu- 
tion of  sand ;  a  gray  sirup  of  silex,  which  drops  dust 
on  your  hand  wherever  you  stop  a  ripple.  The  Platte 
is  never  entirely  dry  in  the  usual  sense ;  but  what 
river  can  be  rationally  drier  than  this,  which  is  com- 
posed, one  particle  in  ten,  of  the  driest  thing  on  the 
globe  ? 

Let  me  take  stock  of  this  pathless  waste  before  me. 
When  they  are  right  under  my  feet,  I  can  see  the 
cork-screw  curls  of  the  gray  gramma.  I  walk  a  little 
further,  and  begin  to  make  distinctions.  Everything 
is  gray,  but  not  all  of  it  is  gramma.  A  little  furzy 
plant,  the  undersides  of  its  leaves  covered  with  a  dry 
down  that  rubs  to  powder  between  the  fingers,  of 
name  unknown,  but  resembling  the  artemisias;  a 
true  artemisia,  from  six  to  eighteen  inches  high,  also 
woolly ;  a  single  spot  of  orange  color  as  large  as  a 
half-dime,  seeming  to  be  a  poor  relation  of  the  mari- 
golds ;  a  stinted  sunflower ;  a  few  sickly  cactuses ;  this 
is  the  vegetable  inventory.  The  beautiful  ground- 
poppy,  and  all  other  flowers  which  might  enliven  a 
landscape,  had  entirely  disappeared. 

Despite  the  nakedness  of  the  land,  it  swarmed  with 
ants,  whose  industry  was  manifest  in  cones  a  foot 
high,  though  it  was  impossible  to  see  any  practical 
application  for  it  in  the  shape  of  food  asking  storage. 
The  same  famine  supported  myriads  of  cheery  grass- 
hoppers, with  red  wings  and  legs,  which  made  them, 
when  they  flew,  the  only  bright  objects  in  the  land- 
scape. A  reddish  -  brown  species  of  cricket  also 


126  THE  HEART  OF  THE   CONTINENT. 

abounded,  its  size  averaging  a  little  larger  than  our 
black  insect  of  the  States.  Here  is  the  animal  inven- 
tory. I  looked  for  lizards,  and  found  none,  though 
they  may  only  have  retired  to  private  apartments  in 
a  temporary  fit  of  disgust  at  their  situation,  since  it 
seems  almost  inconceivable  that  some  member  of  the 
family  should  not  exist  in  so  congenial  a  habitat.  I 
was  disappointed  more  especially  not  to  find  the 
horned  toad,  so  called.  A  friend  of  mine  in  a  West- 
ern expedition  had  discovered  it  on  the  Plains  of  the 
North  Platte,  considerably  east  of  Fort  Laramie ;  but 
we  saw  none  in  our  present  journey  until  within  a 
day's  ride  of  the  Eocky  Mountain  Watershed,  though 
repeatedly  passing  over  tracts  where  they  might  rea- 
sonably be  looked  for. 

That  night  the  wind  blew  more  violently,  if  possi- 
ble, than  it  had  at  Willow  Island.  The  ranch-house 
rocked  under  it,  and  such  tempests  of  sand  came  fly- 
ing with  it,  that  every  crevice  of  the  walls  streamed 
with  little  jets,  and  every  object  that  lay  untouched 
for  an  hour  was  powdered  half  an  inch  deep.  The 
air  was  intensely  dry  and  irritating.  At  sundown  it 
began  to  thunder  and  lighten.  The  flash  and  roar 
soon  became  almost  continuous,  and  remained  so  till 
after  midnight.  With  all  this  commotion  came  not  a 
single  drop  of  rain.  In  the  States  the  water  would 
have  fallen  half  a  foot  deep.  Here,  though  the  sky 
was  black  as  iron,  it  was  equally  hard  and  pitiless. 
The  people  told  me  that  for  years  at  a  time  the  storms 
were  equally  severe  and  rainless  with  this  one.  I 
could  think  of  nothing,  when  I  looked  at  the  heavens, 
but  the  agony  of  a  baffled  yet  unrepentant  soul. 

Through  the  tempest  of  wind  and  sand,  an  east- 
going  stage  struggled  about  tea-time,  bearing  half 


THE  BUFFALO   COUNTRY   TO  THE   GOLD  MINES.     127 

a  dozen  miserable  passengers,  every  one  of  whom 
looked  like  a  cast  of  himself  in  silex,  unflattered  in 
expression.  They  had  come  all  the  way  from  Califor- 
nia ;  and  I  shuddered  to  think  whether  I  should  have 
grown  as  reckless  as  they  by  the  time  I  was  equally 
near  my  end  of  the  journey.  Some  of  them  seemed 
merely  hanging  on  to  life  by  the  neck  of  a  pocket- 
flask.  Solitary  confinement,  with  a  Chinese  gong 
beaten  at  fifteen-minute  intervals,  day  and  night,  for 
six  months,  near  one's  bunk-head,  could  not  have  re- 
duced victims  to  a  more  deplorable  state  of  despair 
and  defacultization.  One  passenger,  who,  being  now 
only  four  hundred  miles  or  so  from  home,  felt  as  if  he 
were  beginning  to  catch  sight  of  familiar  chimney- 
pots, sold  his  blankets  to  the  station-keeper,  under  an 
impression  that  he  would  have  no  further  use  for 
them.  They  were  of  the  best  California  variety,  a 
handsome  blue,  little  worn,  and  could  not  have  been 
purchased  originally  for  less  than  ten  dollars  in  gold. 
As  I  soon  after  bought  them  of  the  station-keeper  for 
two  dollars  and  a  half  in  greenbacks, —  and  nobody 
.ever  does  anything  out  there  except  at  a  tremendous 
profit, — I  am  led  to  conclude  that  the  passenger  must 
have  lost  much  of  his  hold  on  life.  I  felt  sorry  for 
him  whenever  I  wrapped  myself  up  in  his  handsome 
spoils,  though  they  proved  an  invaluable  addition  to 
my  own  during  the  bitter  nights  we  afterwards  spent 
next  the  snow-peaks. 

Beyond  Spring  Hill,  the  South  Platte  makes  the 
nearest  approach  to  beauty  which  you  find  in  it  till 
you  see  it  issuing  from  its  lofty  canon  back  of  Den- 
ver. All  the  way  that  we  skirted  it  during  the 
remainder  of  the  afternoon,  it  was  studded  with 
picturesque  islands,  green  as  emerald.  When  the 


128      THE  HEART  OF  THE  CONTINENT. 

sun  declined  so  that  its  level  rays  overlooked,  instead 
of  pointing  out  the  arid  plains,  and  the  carrion  car- 
casses of  dead  cattle  which  pollute  them,  the  view 
became  quite  fascinating.  It  was  like  fairy-land 
when  the  sun  disappeared  entirely,  and  the  whole 
west  became  glorious  with  gold  and  purple,  green 
and  salmon,  reflected  in  the  slow-creeping  water  be- 
tween the  islands.  Whatever  else  may  be  lacking  on 
the  Plains,  the  sunsets  are  magnificent.  To  be  sure, 
the  natives  cannot  be  held  responsible  for  that ;  if 
they  could  get  at  them,  they  would  fry  them.  As  it 
is,  Nature  triumphs  over  all ;  and  the  two  hours  I 
used  to  sit  on  the  stage-box  worshipping  her  sunset 
divinity,  were  compensation  enough  for  a  whole  day 
of  discomfort. 

For  twenty-five  miles  beyond  Spring  Hill,  we  rode 
through  a  solitude  broken  only  by  one  station-house, 
a  few  antelope,  and  innumerable  jackass  -  rabbits. 
The  latter  came  tamely  out  to  bathe  their  immense 
ears  in  twilight,  squatting  among  patches  of  gramma 
and  artemisia,  or  leaping  across  the  road  so  close  to 
us  that  if  we  had  had  time  to  stop  and  cook  them, 
we  might  easily  have  shot  a  dozen  as  we  toiled  by 
them  through  the  deep  sand. 

About  day-break  we  drew  up  at  Beaver  Creek  Sta- 
tion, five  hundred  and  thirty-three  miles  from  Atchi- 
son,  and  a  hundred  and  twenty  from  Denver.  The 
station  consisted,  as  usual,  of  a  single  house  with  the 
company's  stables  and  corral  attached,  and  is  situated 
about  three  miles  east  of  the  Beaver  Creek  laid  down 
on  the  maps.  The  light  was  vague  when  we  first 
stopped,  but  sufficient  to  reveal  a  picturesqueness  in 
the  immediate  landscape  which  set  my  heart  bound- 
ing, after  the  experience  of  the  past  two  days.  Nature, 


THE  BUFFALO  COUNTRY  TO  THE  GOLD  MINES.  129 

for  a  little  respite,  had  repented  her  of  neutral  tints, 
and  forsaken  the  Society  of  Friends.  The  Platte  had 
made  a  concession  to  our  rebellious  aesthetic  sense,  by 
sending  out  from  the  main  channel,  where  it  crept 
eastward,  some  forty  rods  north  of  the  house,  a  sinu- 
ous lagoon  terminating  in  a  marsh  near  the  road. 
All  along  the  borders  of  this  still  but  living  water, 
the  grass  was  green  and  thick  even  to  rankness,  and 
its  high  banks  bore  in  profusion  succulent  weeds,  con- 
generic with  those  that  haunt  our  Eastern  morasses. 
As  the  sun  grew  nearer  the  horizon,  this  pleasant 
feature  showed  to  better  advantage.  The  eye  rested 
on  the  broad  borders  and  patches  of  living  greenness, 
with  a  feeling  of  comfort  that  no  Eastern  imagination 
can  appreciate.  The  rosy  hues  of  as  lovely  a  sunrise 
as  I  ever  saw,  bloomed  slowly  out  on  the  spotless 
mirror  of  the  water,  with  the  effect  of  a  developing 
daguerreotype  or  a  dissolving  view.  The  lagoon 
became  iridescent  upon  one  side,  remaining  black 
as  night  under  the  shadow  of  the  opposite  bank;  and 
when  a  light  mist  began  rising  under  the  touch  of 
growing  light,  the  colors  shone  through  breaks  in  its 
dancing  masses  beautiful  as  a  dream.  Still  a  little 
later,  then  the  rosy  changed  to  golden ;  and  when  the 
sun  first  showed  his  edge,  the  water  was  turned  to  a 
sheet  of  topaz  fire. 

With  advancing  dawn,  large  game  broke  into  view. 
I  thought  I  had  seen  ducks  before,  but  the  lagoon  and 
the  river  swarmed  with  them  to  a  degree  which  quite 
corrected  my  views  on  that  subject.  Two  or  three 
varieties  of  teal,  the  ruddy  duck,  a  mallard,  and  a 
small  diver  were  represented  in  the  great  argosy 
that  rippled  the  smooth,  glowing  water ;  and  beyond 
my  immediate  ken,  there  may  have  been  detach- 

9 


130      THE  HEART  OF  THE  CONTINENT. 

merits  from  numerous  others,  Colorado  possessing 
fourteen  distinct  species  of  the  bird.  Every  step  of 
my  way  along  the  margin  of  the  main  stream  sent 
the  quacking  mistress  of  some  future  family  scurry- 
Lag  off  her  loose-built  nest,  until  the  water  was  alive 
with  gliding  motion  of  exquisite  grace,  and  colors  of 
the  most  varied  beauty.  The  cinnamon  teal  and  the 
ruddy  duck  were  rich  warm  patches  that  slipped  past 
like  tinted  vapor;  while  the  green  and  blue-winged 
teal  shone  cool  and  steely  in  the  dawn  which  had 
come  to  waken  them  with  me.  It  seems  to  me  that 
I  have  never  seen  bird-life  more  plentiful  or  lovely. 

We  were  all  seated  on  or  in  the  wagon,  when  our 
scarred  driver  pointed  westward  across  the  Plains, 
now  all  aflood  with  the  gold  of  the  risen  sun,  and 
said,  — 

"  There  are  the  Kocky  Mountains." 

I  strained  my  eyes  in  the  direction  of  his  finger, 
but  for  a  minute  could  see  nothing.  Presently  sight 
seemed  adjusted  to  a  new  focus,  and  out  against  the 
bright  sky  dawned  slowly  the  undefined  shimmering 
trace  of  something  a  little  bluer.  Still,  it  seemed 
nothing  tangible.  It  might  have  passed  for  a  vapor 
effect  on  the  horizon,  had  not  the  driver  called  it 
otherwise.  Another  minute,  and  it  took  slightly 
more  certain  shape.  It  cannot  be  described  by  any 
Eastern  analogy  ;  no  other  far  mountain  view  that  I 
ever  saw  is  at  all  like  it.  If  you  have  ever  seen 
those  sea-side  albums  which  ladies  fill  with  algae 
during  their  summer  holiday,  and  in  those  albums 
have  been  startled,  on  turning  over  a  page  suddenly, 
to  see  an  exquisite  marine  ghost  appear,  almost 
evanescent  in  its  faint  azure,  but  still  a  literal  exist- 
ence which  had  been  called  up  from  the  deeps  and 


THE  BUFFALO  COUNTRY  TO  THE  GOLD  MINES.  131 

laid  to  rest  with  infinite  delicacy  and  difficulty,  then 
you  will  form  some  conception  of  the  first  view  of 
the  Rocky  Mountains.  It  is  impossible  to  imagine 
them  built  of  earth,  rock,  anything  terrestrial ;  to 
fancy  them  cloven  by  horrible  .  chasms,  or  shaggy 
with  giant  woods.  They  are  made  out  of  the  air 
and  the  sunshine  which  show  them.  Nature  has 
dipped  her  pencil  in  the  faintest  solution  of  ultra- 
marine, and  drawn  it  once  across  the  western  sky, 
with  a  hand  tender  as  Love's.  Then,  when  sight 
becomes  still  better  adjusted,  you  find  the  most 
delicate  division  taking  place  in  this  pale  blot  of 
beauty,  near  its  upper  edge.  It  is  rimmed  with  a 
mere  thread  of  opaline  and  crystalline  light.  For  a 
moment  it  sways  before  you,  and  is  confused.  But 
your  eagerness  grows  steadier,  you  see  plainer,  and 
know  that  you  are  looking  on  the  everlasting  snow, 
the  ice  that  never  melts.  As  the  entire  fact  in  all 
its  meaning  possesses  you  completely,  you  feel  a  sen- 
sation which  is  as  new  to  your  life  as  it  is  impossible 
of  repetition.  I  confess  (I  should  be  ashamed  not  to 
confess)  that  my  first  view  of  the  Rocky  Mountains 
had  no  way  of  expressing  itself  save  in  tears.  To 
see  what  they  looked,  and  know  what  they  were,  was 
like  a  sudden  revelation  of  the  truth,  that  the  spirit- 
ual is  the  only  real  and  substantial ;  that  the  eternal 
things  of  the  universe  are  they  which  afar  off  seem 
dun  and  faint. 

Soon  after  leaving  the  breakfast  station,  we  struck 
a  low  range  of  tiresome  sand-hills  resembling  those 
about  Julesburg.  Through  them  runs  to  the  Platte, 
Beaver  Creek,  the  first  of  a  series  of  short  streams, 
laid  down  on  the  maps  as  draining  a  broad  plateau 
south  of  Denver,  and  communicating  with  the  river 


132  THE   HEART  OF   THE   CONTINENT. 

in  nearly  parallel  lines.  Bijou,  Kiowa,  and  Cherry 
Creeks  are  the  three  others  noticed;  and  there  is  a 
fourth,  which  does  not  appear  on  any  United  States 
map,  emptying  into  the  river  near  Denver,  and 
called  Coal  Creek.  I  have  said  that  Beaver  Creek 
runs,  but  this  is  hyperbole.  It  just  trickles.  A 
thirsty  mule  might  have  stopped  at  one  of  the  holes 
in  its  bed,  and  in  five  minutes  drunk  it  dry,  to  stay 
so  for  an  hour.  Its  pulse  was  feeble  as  syncope.  As 
to  Bijou,  I  do  not  feel  that  I  am  anticipating  by  its 
mention,  for  when  we  got  to  it  there  was  nothing  to 
anticipate ;  while  Cherry  Creek,  running  through 
part  of  Denver,  is  a  mere  bed,  dry  as  Sahara,  save 
when  some  express  train  of  a  snow-melting  freshet 
comes  thundering  down  from  the  range,  to  surprise 
human  life  and  property  in  its  murderous  rush,  as  it 
did  in  1864. 

At  Junction,  the  next  station  west  of  Beaver  Creek, 
we  left  the  Platte,  and  took  a  cut-off  to  Fremont's 
Orchard,  twenty  miles  across  a  succession  of  high 
sand-hills,  on  which  the  sun  pelted  and  the  dry  hot 
wind  blew  more  mercilessly  than  anywhere  on  our 
previous  journey.  I  had  left  my  canteen  behind  me 
at  Diamond  Spring  ;  one  might  as  well  look  for  water 
in  an  ash  barrel  as  anywhere  along  the  cut-off;  and 
before  we  were  half-way  over  it,  I  suffered  from  a 
thirst,  only  paralleled  hitherto  by  the  experience  of 
my  buffalo  hunt.  But  for  the  misery  of  a  parched 
tongue,  a  throat  like  a  glass-house  chimney,  lips 
cracked  by  the  alkali  atmosphere,  and  the  lassitude 
of  a  perfectly  shadeless  ride  on  the  hottest  day  of 
the  season,  I  should  have  enjoyed  the  new  nature 
opening  to  study  throughout  this  tract,  with  much 
zest  and  enthusiasm.  From  the  time  we  left  Junction 


THE  BUFFALO  COUNTRY  TO  THE  GOLD  MINES.  133 

till  we  struck  the  Platte  again,  we  seemed  to  be  in  a 
new  zone,  both  botanically  and  zoologically.  If  we 
had  altered  our  latitude  by  a  hundred  miles,  we 
could  hardly  have  entered  a  fauna  and  flora  more 
widely  differing  from  those  of  the  Plains  proper  than 
we  attained  by  the  present  slight  change  in  our  topo- 
graphical conditions.  We  found  on  the  long  sand-hills 
which  we  now  had  to  climb,  a  greater  variety  of  plants 
than  we  had  discovered  over  all  the  comparative  level 
between  O'Fallon's  Bluff  and  Beaver  Creek.  Among 
others  were  by  far  the  handsomest  asclepias  I  ever 
saw,  with  profuse  pink  blossoms;  a  beautiful  rose- 
colored  cactus  of  the  branching  kind,  several  of  the 
globular  varieties,  and  the  common  yellow  variety  in 
great  profusion ;  a  blue  daisy,  seen  here  for  the  first 
time,  in  all  but  its  color  nearly  resembling  the  white 
millefoil  daisy  of  the  East;  several  sunflowers,  and 
varieties  of  flowering  bean  and  pea ;  a  blue  flower, 
apparently  of  the  larkspur  family;  another  poor 
relation  of  the  marigolds,  like  that  noticed  at  Dia- 
mond Springs  ;  star-grass  here  and  there  ;  and  a  very 
singular  blossom,  quite  unknown  to  me,  which  con- 
sisted of  a  fusiform  central  sack  of  fibrous  tissue 
containing  pulp,  and  attached  to  this  three  membra- 
nous wings,  like  those  of  a  maple-seed,  but  much 
larger  and  softer,  as  well  as  differently  colored,  a  pale 
flesh  tint  characterizing  the  fresh  specimens.  These 
plants  all  grow  out  of  a  soil  which  might  have  rivaled 
the  mountains  of  Gilboa  for  ignorance  of  either  rain 
or  dew,  and  with  a  desolate,  hot  exposure,  where 
utter  sterility  might  have  been  pardoned.  Though 
they  flourished,  and  I  was  informed  that  cattle  could 
subsist  themselves  across  this  waste,  I  saw  nothing  in 
the  shape  of  herbage  which  even  a  charity  broadened 


134  THE  HEART  OF  THE   CONTINENT. 

by  appreciation  of  the  gramma,  could  have  called 
edible  food. 

For  the  first  time  lizards  appeared  plentifully.  A 
little  brown-and-yellow  variety,  occasionally  tending 
toward  red,  and  in  shape,  as  well  as  agility  of  motion, 
resembling  the  so-called  chameleon  of  the  Southern 
States,  was  the  chief  enlivener  of  all  our  toilsome 
climbs,  darting  across  the  road  at  our  approach  with 
great  velocity,  and  whisking  under  the  shadow  of 
some  fat  cactus  which  hid  everything  but  its  beady 
eyes  and  betraying  tail.  The  naturally  expectable 
horned  toad  still  failed  to  make  its  appearance.  The 
air  was  merry  with  red-winged  grasshoppers ;  great 
liver-colored  crickets  basked  on  all  the  little  sand- 
hummocks  ;  one  old  familiar  friend  of  Eastern  road- 
sides, the  "tumble-bug,"  was  here  and  there  seen 
rolling  its  balls  into  a  happy  rotundity,  under  much 
more  trying  circumstances  of  ground  than  its  rela- 
tion in  the  States ;  a  very  handsome  lady-bird  beetle, 
in  size  considerably  surpassing  our  own,  and  a  small 
painted  beetle  of  the  pumpkin-bug  appearance,  fin- 
ished the  more  obvious  catalogue  of  insect  life  on 
this  tract.  Less  apparent  to  the  eye,  but  abundantly 
sensible  to  feeling,  were  the  minute  buffalo-gnats, 
which  at  intervals  during  the  past  three  days  had 
much  annoyed  us  along  the  Platte,  but  now  became 
a  nuisance  justifying  imprecation.  As  if  we  had  not 
enough  to  suffer  from  parching  heat  and  thirst, 
mules  tired  to  death,  deep  sand,  and  a  surly  driver, 
these  pestilent  little  creatures  swarmed  around  our 
heads  and  into  our  hair,  stinging  us  on  neck  and 
scalp  like  so  many  winged  cambric  needles  dipped  in 
aqua-fortis,  and  utterly  scouting  the  obstacle  of  a 
green  barege  veil  which  I  had  brought  from  Atchison 


THE  BUFFALO  COUNTRY  TO  THE  GOLD  MINES.  135 

for  defense  against  them.  Wherever  there  was  the 
minutest  crevice  in  the  barrier,  they  swarmed  through 
without  the  mosquito's  warning  hum ;  and  the  first 
sign  that  these  microscopic  Philistines  were  upon  us, 
was  an  itching  which  no  slaps  or  scratches  could  ap- 
pease. 

Ravens,  crows,  here  and  there  a  variety  of  black- 
bird, and  a  small  ground-sparrow  were  the  region's 
only  contributions  to  ornithology,  so  far  as  I  observed. 
The  only  mammalia  anywhere  to  be  seen  were  a  herd 
of  antelope,  faultlessly  constant  to  desolation,  which 
crossed  the  road  at  lightning  speed  about  a  hundred 
yards  ahead  of  us,  on  their  way  to  drink  at  the  Platte, 
an  hour  before  we  reached  Fremont's  Orchard.  Prai- 
rie-dogs and  jack-rabbits  either  did  not  exist  in  the 
neighborhood,  or  had  the  wisdom  and  good  taste  to 
keep  their  settlements  away  from  the  cutoff,  and 
themselves  out  of  the  torrid  sunlight. 

The  last  three  or  four  miles  of  our  way  led  us 
through  a  series  of  arroyos,  or  deep  channels,  to 
which  I  have  before  referred  in  describing  the  Plains 
formation,  running  towards  the  Platte,  and  evidently 
at  some  remote  geological  day  the  drains  of  rapid 
water-masses,  though  they  have  not  been  moist  with- 
in the  memory  of  man.  Everything  in  their  direc- 
tion, their  shape,  and  the  successive  terraces  of  their 
banks,*"suggests  a  series  of  water-courses  only  recently 
dried  up ;  and  not  until  one  has  traversed  them  en- 
tirely to  the  fine  old  cotton-woods  at  Fremont's  Or- 
chard does  he  give  up  the  notion  that  he  must  be 
near  some  temporarily  exhausted  affluent  of  the 
Platte.  They  are,  all  of  them,  larger  than  the  chan- 
nels laid  down  on  the  maps  as  creeks,  and,  to  all  ap- 
pearance, might  as  well  discharge  some  water  from 


136  THE  HEART  OF  THE   CONTINENT. 

the  plateau  at  longer  or  shorter  intervals ;  yet  their 
thirstiness  is  a  matter  of  ages,  not  of  years. 

At  Eagle's  Nest,  a  station  eleven  miles  from  the 
Orchard,  I  observed,  for  the  first  time  since  leaving 
Cottonwood,  a  stony  outcrop  from  the  universal  sand. 
It  was  a  friable  sandstone,  abounding  in  iron,  and 
possessing  a  curious  conchoidal  cleavage,  which,  with 
a  little  delicacy  of  manipulation,  enabled  me  to  sepa- 
rate a  large  piece  of  it  in  concentric  basins  or  belts. 
Its  solidification'  was  very  recent,  probably  belonging 
to  a  post-tertiary  period. 

From  Eagle's  Nest  to  Latham,  a  distance  of  twelve 
miles,  we  rode  almost  immediately  along  the  banks 
of  the  Platte,  which  here  began  to  compress  itself 
within  narrower  boundaries,  and  rejoice  in  higher, 
much  better  timbered,  and  more  picturesque  banks. 
Just  west  of  Latham,  the  main  trail  to  California 
crosses  and  leaves  the  South  Platte,  the  river  itself 
making  an  abrupt  bend  of  nearly  45°  from  the  south- 
erly direction.  The  road  to  Denver,  a  distance  of 
sixty  miles,  follows  up  the  Platte,  Denver  being  at 
the  junction  of  that  stream  with  the  spasmodic  and 
semi-mythical  Cherry  Creek.  Reaching  Latham  about 
dark,  I  abandoned  the  stage  which  had  brought  me 
thus  far  westward,  and  awaited  another,  which  was  to 
start  for  Denver  on  the  arrival  of  the  eastward  pas- 
sengers. It  was  ten  o'clock  before  this  happy  pre- 
requisite was  fulfilled.  The  interval  of  waiting  I  was 
only  too  glad  to  consume,  after  a  tolerable  supper  at 
the  station-house,  in  a  straighi>out  slumber  among  the 
grain-bags  of  the  company's  stables,  having  first  feed 
the  driver  of  the  Denver  stage  to  wake  me  when  he 
got  ready  for  the  start. 

I  was  surprised  to  find  the  Platte  becoming  quite  a 


THE  BUFFALO  COUNTRY  TO  THE  GOLD  MINES.  137 

nice  stream  soon  after  we  left  Latham.  Its  banks  hid 
their  sandy  monotony  under  a  fine  cotton-wood  fringe, 
which,  without  any  extensive  gap,  continued  all  the 
way  to  Denver.  The  river  was  very  narrow,  in  some 
places  not  half  its  width  at  Diamond  Springs,  and 
began  to  assume  the  clear,  forcible  look  of  a  true 
mountain  stream.  Regarding  this  bright  young  brook, 
which  should  shortly  become  a  melancholy  sewer,  I 
felt  like  some  prophetic  soul  who  sees  the  future 
outcast  in  the  innocent  child.  It  was  sad  to  reflect 
what  the  Platte  would  come  to. 

The  night  was  a  deliciously  temperate  one,  the 
moon  at  its  full,  and  I  the  only  passenger  who  shared 
the  driver's  seat;  so  I  enjoyed  unbounded  facilities 
for  feasting  on  the  new  landscape.  There  were  many 
signs  in  it  of  cultivation.  Ranches  had  dropped  into 
the  lap  of  nature;  and  though  their  surrounding 
meadows  were  far  from  what  we  should  call  green  in 
the  States,  attempts  at  irrigation  had  been  made  here 
and  there,  and  the  grateful  ground  responded  to  the 
extent  at  least  of  a  small  vegetable  garden.  The 
land  was  a  smooth  rolling  prairie,  without  high  hills, 
and  in  some  places  generous  enough  to  support  a 
noble  clump  of  trees  at  the  distance  of  half  a  mile 
from  the  river. 

Nothing  of  any  importance  occurred  during  the 
night.  The  mountains,  which  had  been  growing 
plainer  all  day,  were  almost  dimmed  back  into  their 
morning  romance  of  spirituality.  Long's  Peak,  one 
of  the  loftiest  in  the  range,  rose  ghastly  on  our  im- 
mediate right ;  and  from  the  point  of  high  light  on 
its  snowy  head,  the  Sierra  retreated  into  increasing 
mistiness  toward  the  south,  becoming  a  mere  film  of 
moonlit  cobweb  behind  the  invisible  town  of  Denver. 


138  THE  HEART  OF  THE  CONTINENT. 

I  talked  with  the  driver  as  far  as  Fort  Lupton, — a 
stockaded  rendezvous  and  trading-post,  now  aban- 
doned, situated  on  the  east  bank  of  the  Platte,  about 
thirty  miles  from  Denver, — and  then  curled  myself 
up  in  the  front  boot,  found  fortunately  empty,  to  fin- 
ish the  nap  interrupted  at  Latham.  Waking  after  a 
couple  of  hours,  I  found  the  dawn  up  before  me,  and 
resumed  my  seat  on  the  box  for  the  last  fourteen 
miles. 

A  few  miles  out  of  Denver  the  signs  of  civilization 
began  to  thicken  fast.  The  inclosed  ranches  became 
more  frequent.  One  island  in  the  Platte  had  been 
brought  under  cultivation,  and  adorned  with  a  house 
and  garden  which  would  not  have  shamed  a  neigh- 
borhood of  Eastern  country  seats. 

Finally,  as  we  ascended  a  hill,  Denver  broke  upon 
us.  It  was  a  larger  place,  in  its  first  impression  on 
me,  than  I  had  expected  to  find.  It  lay  scattered  at 
the  bottom  and  about  the  slopes  of  a  basin  formed  by 
the  lowest  foot-hills  of  the  Rocky  Mountains ;  and  its 
white  dots,  relieved  against  the  rich  brown  of  the 
hills,  made  a  very  cheerful  contrast.  At  six  o'clock 
in  the  morning,  we  bowled  over  the  rim  of  the  basin, 
and  rattled  down  to  the  stage  office.  At  the  door  of 
the  adjoining  Planters'  Hotel  I  met  some  of  our 
party.  They  had  reached  Denver,  as  we  expected, 
just  a  day  before  me,  without  any  unusual  accident 
or  adventure. 


CHAPTEE  IV. 

PIKE'S  PEAK  AND  THE  GARDEN  OF  THE  GODS. 

IN  a  few  days  we  were  so  thoroughly  rested  that  we 
became  tired  of  having  nothing  to  tire  us.  We  pro- 
posed to  ourselves  at  least  two  subordinate  trips  out 
of  Denver  before  we  should  finally  leave  the  place  for 
Salt  Lake  :  the  first  to  Pike's  Peak,  with  the  remark- 
able scenery  and  geological  formations  lying  between 
it  and  Denver;  the  second  to  the  chief  Colorado 
gold  mines  and  their  business  nucleus  at  Central  City. 

Our  kind  friends  at  Denver  took  such  a  warm,  prac- 
tical interest  in  the  former  of  these  expeditions,  that 
we  had  hardly  broached  its  subject  when  the  means 
of  accomplishing  it  were  put  at  our  disposal.  Gov- 
ernor Evans  very  kindly  offered  us  his  ambulance,  a 
comfortable  vehicle,  strongly  built,  capable  of  accom- 
modating four  persons,  and  the  very  thing  for  our 
purpose,  and  a  pair  of  stout  serviceable  horses,  accus- 
tomed to  territorial  travelling.  Mr.  Pierce  was  oblig- 
ing enough  not  only  to  pilot  our  expedition,  but  to 
contribute  his  own  horse  and  buck-board  to  the  ser- 
vice, taking  our  .artist  and  his  color-box  beside  him 
on  the  elastic  machine.  These  two  being  provided 
for,  Judge  Hall  occupied  the  fourth  seat  in  the  ambu- 
lance with  myself  and  the  two  other  Overlanders;  and 
having  abundantly  supplied  ourselves  with  food  and 
ammunition,  we  set  out  for  our  seventy  miles'  journey 
to  the  base  of  Pike's  Peak,  on  the  10th  of  June,  after 
an  early  breakfast. 


140      THE  HEART  OF  THE  CONTINENT. 

Our  road  led  us  out  of  the  southern  portion  of  the 
town,  past  the  barracks  of  a  detachment  of  Colorado 
volunteers,  called  Camp  Weld,  in  honor  of  the  late 
secretary,  who  had  resigned  in  their  cause.  The  camp 
was  a  pleasant  and  orderly  one  ;  the  fine  appearance 
of  the  men  impressed  us  all. 

There  is  a  lofty  divide  and  wooded  table-land, 
which  sheds  off  Cherry  Creek  upon  the  east,  and 
Plum  Creek  on  the  west  side.  This  divide  terminates 
in  a  much  larger  and  loftier  one,  running  nearly  east 
and  west  from  the  Rocky  Mountain  foot-hills,  an  un- 
measured distance  into  the  Plains.  It  is  the  opinion 
of  many  experienced  frontiersmen  that  the  Repub- 
lican Fork  of  the  Kansas  River  takes  its  rise  out  of 
the  eastern  extremity  of  this  divide.  When  we  re- 
member the  various  masses  of  Rocky  Mountain  detri- 
tus discovered  in  our  expedition  to  the  buffalo  coun- 
try on  the  lower  portion  of  the  Republican  Fork,  it 
certainly  seems  improbable  that  the  stream  rises  any 
further  east  than  this.  There  are  not  lacking  hunt- 
ers and  trappers  who  assert  that  they  have  drunk 
from  the  springs  of  the  Republican  on  this  divide ; 
but  there  is  a  long  tract  to  be  explored  before  the 
connection  can  be  absolutely  established.  All  the 
attempts  which  had  been  made  to  track  up  the  course 
of  the  stream  prior  to  our  visit  at  Denver,  had  failed 
on  account  of  the  extreme  sterility  of  certain  por- 
tions of  its  banks.  One  train,  to  which  a  large  re- 
ward had  been  offered  for  the  discovery  of  a  route 
from  the  Missouri  to  Denver  along  the  main  Kansas 
and  the  Republican,  was  obliged  to  turn  north  and 
Beek  the  old  trail,  after  having  wallowed  for  days 
through  sand-hills,  where  the  teams  could  hardly  pull 
their  load,  and  nearly  starved  for  lack  of  herbage. 


PIKE'S  PEAK  AND  THE  GARDEN  OF  THE   GODS.     141 

If  the  Republican  can  be  proved  to  take  its  rise 
where  I  have  supposed,  its  course  is  perhaps  the 
best  natural  line  for  that  portion  of  the  Pacific  Rail- 
road to  be  run  between  the  main  Kansas  and  Denver. 
Fewer  engineering  difficulties  would  exist  on  this 
line  than  on  any  other;  the  finest  grazing-land  in 
America  would  be  opened  to  settlement  on  the  lower 
portion  of  the  Republican;  and -the  barren  land  inter- 
vening between  that  and  the  high  divide  would  offer 
no  such  obstacles  to  a  railroad  train  as  to  make  the 
route  impracticable  for  cattle. 

Our  present  road  led  us  from  Denver  to  the  crown 
of  the  smaller  divide,  and  thence  along  its  surface,  to 
its  junction  with  the  larger.  I  must  not  omit  to  say 
that  this  latter  is  the  watershed  between  the  Platte 
and  Arkansas  rivers.  It  is  about  half-way  between 
Denver  and  Colorado  City.  We  proposed  to  reach  it 
by  our  first  day's  journey,  getting  to  Colorado  City 
at  the  close  of  the  second. 

Six  miles  of  pretty  level  travelling  brought  us  to 
the  ascent  of  the  Plum  and  Cherry  Creek  divide.  By 
quite  a  steep  rise  we  reached  the  top  of  the  divide, 
and  rested  our  horses  while  we  enjoyed  the  scenery. 
From  the  foot  of  our  lofty  elevation  the  Plains 
stretched  for  a  hundred  miles  to  the  east  and  north, 
to  our  sight  as  level  as  the  sea,  and  still  more  soli- 
tary. Standing  where  all  minor  details  were  lost,  we 
could  not  see  the  sail  of  a  single  wagon-cover  whiten- 
ing the  desolate,  billowless  main ;  nor  did  there  peer 
from  it  any  little  islets  of  green  vegetation.  It  might 
have  been  the  sea  of  the  Ancient  Mariner,  and  we 
"  the  first  who  ever  burst "  into  its  silence.  The  de- 
ception, if  you  choose  to  call  it  so,  was  quite  perfect. 
But  I  do  not  like  that  word.  Nature  in  her  highest 


142      THE  HEART  OF  THE  CONTINENT. 

moods  runs  the  same  idea  into  several  creations. 
Great  things  resemble  each  other.  The  gods  are  of 
one  blood,  and  the  sea  is  like  the  desert. 

A  yet  grander  sight  than  the  dead  sea  of  the  Plains 
invited  us  on  our  right.  We  had  risen  so  far  above 
the  Denver  basin  that  the  foot-hills  shrank  out  of 
sight,  and  the  mountains  behind  the  town  uncovered 
themselves  boldly  to  our  view.  From  our  position 
they  appeared  nearly  on  a  level  with  us,  a  fact  of  per- 
spective which  enabled  us  to  separate  them  into  five 
or  six  distinct  or  anastomosing  ranges  between  the 
level  plains  and  the  highest  snow-peak.  The  arcs 
described  by  each  range  so  intersected  those  of  the 
neighboring  ranges,  that  Judge  Hall  quite  aptly  com- 
pared our  view  to  a  herd  of  travelling  dromedaries. 
Equally  happy  was  another  favorite  illustration  of 
the  judge's,  frequently  used  in  his  explanations  of 
Colorado  geology,  in  which  he  compared  the  unfold- 
ing of  the  several  uplifts  at  our  present  point  of  vis- 
ion to  the  opening  leaves  of  the  peony. 

A  book  on  the  Rocky  Mountains  should  say  some- 
thing about  those  mountains,  yet  I  confess  that  I 
have  deliberated  well  ere  deciding  to  do  so.  The 
description  I  have  given  of  their  first  azure  blossom- 
ing on  the  sky  west  of  Beaver  Creek,  is  no  dreamier 
than  must  be  a  reader's  idea  of  the  mountains  seen 
close  at  hand,  after  the  most  vivid  description  that 
can  be  written.  In  the  East  there  is  nothing  to  illus- 
trate the  Rocky  Mountains  by.  With  the  Rocky 
Mountains,  the  Alleghanies  and  the  Taconic  have  no 
common  terms.  Here  are  none  of  those  delicious, 
turfy  glades,  those  enameled  banks,  which  beautify 
the  mountains  of  our  Atlantic  slope.  The  landscape 
is  without  a  single  patch  of  bright  green.  The 


PIKE'S  PEAK  AND   THE   GARDEN  OF  THE  GODS.     143 

mountains  rise  up  in  rugged,  brawny  masses,  without 
the  apology  of  color  for  a  nakedness  that  is  grand  in 
itself.  They  oppress  you  with  such  sublime  size,  they 
are  the  evident  stone-mask  of  such  a  tremendous  force 
spent  in  the  old  centuries,  that  you  do  not  miss  color 
in  them, — do  not  think  of  it.  Every  cross-twist  in 
them  is  the  cast  of  a  muscle  strained  by  the  gladia- 
tor, Fire. 

The  gentler  curves,  the  valleys  that  lead  out  of 
sight  into  mountain  recesses,  —  these  are  sugges- 
tions of  a  gentler  world-time,  which  came  after  the 
struggle.  They  are  the  kisses  of  the  Water  Nymph, 
and  the  dalliance  of  bland  but  treacherous  Oxygen. 
The  Rocky  Mountains  are  full  of  infinite  suggestion. 
Their  presence  makes  a  thoughtful  man  wish  to  sit 
down  and  learn  from  them;  there  is  such  genius  in 
it,  it  so  overawes  one.  You  are  surprised  when  you 
examine  this  feeling,  and  see  how  few  of  the  qualities 
which  made  you  admire  other  mountains,  exist  in 
these.  What  you  see  is  a  colossal  mass  of  brown, 
and,  in  its  highest  lights,  of  amber,  relieved  against 
nothing,  mediated  by  nothing,  its  wall  bounding  your 
entire  western  horizon.  It  is  so  consistently  great, 
it  is  a  congress  of  such  equal  giants,  that  you  cannot 
compare  it  with  any  of  the  ranges  you  have  seen  be- 
fore. When  you  rise  to  a  higher  plane  of  vision,  this 
single  leaf  of  grandeur  becomes  a  book.  You  con- 
fess you  have  not  seen  the  Rocky  Mountains  until 
now.  Mountain  billows  westward  after  mountain, 
their  crests  climbing  as  they  go ;  and  far  on,  where 
you  might  suppose  the  Plains  began  again,  break  on 
a  spotless  strand  of  everlasting  snow. 

This  snow  indicates  the  top  of  the  range.  But 
of  what  range  ?  Not  the  top  of  the  Rocky  Moun- 


144  THE  HEART   OF   THE   CONTINENT. 

tains,  but  only  of  a  small  minor  range  in  that  range. 
That  glittering  ridge  yonder  is  but  one  of  a  hundred 
lying  parallel  with  it  to  the  westward.  We  have  not 
even  yet  seen  the  Rocky  Mountains. 

I  remember  how  the  idea  of  crossing  the  Rocky 
Mountains  used  to  look  to  me.  It  was  an  affair  some- 
thing like  the  steep  grades  between  Altoona  and  Pitts- 
burg,  where  it  takes  part  of  a  day  to  go  up,  see  the 
view,  and  come  down  satisfied  on  the  other  side.  In 
spite  of  the  atlas  (or  by  favor  of  some  of  the  earlier 
ones),  I  never  could  conceive  of  the  Rocky  Mountains 
except  as  a  single  range  occupying  a  small  line  along 
the  axis  of  the  Continent.  Comparatively  little  has 
been  done  for  the  geology  of  this  region,  so  that  sci- 
entific distinctions  in  that  science  have  no  more  famil- 
iarized us  with  the  multitudinous  ranges  than  have 
those  of  geography.  I  suppose  that  to  most  Eastern 
men  the  discovery  of  what  is  meant  by  crossing  the 
Rocky  Mountains  would  be  as  great  a  surprise  as  it 
was  to  myself.  Day  after  day,  as  we  were  travelling 
between  Denver  and  Salt  Lake,  I  kept  wondering 
when  we  should  get  over  the  mountains.  Four,  five, 
six  days,  still  we  were  perpetually  climbing,  descend- 
ing, or  flanking  them;  and  at  nightfall  of  the  last 
day,  we  rolled  down  into  the  Mormon  city,  through 
a  gorge  in  one  of  the  grandest  ranges  in  the  system. 
Then,  for  the  first  tune  after  a  journey  of  six  hun- 
dred miles,  could  we  be  said  to  have  crossed  the 
Rocky  Mountains. 

The  only  name  for  the  system  is  "nation."  ."Range" 
does  not  express  it  at  all.  It  is  a  whole  country,  pop- 
ulous with  mountains.  It  is  as  if  an  ocean  of  molten 
granite  had  been  caught  by  instant  petrifaction  when 
its  billows  were  rolling  heaven-high. 


PIKE'S  PEAK  AND  THE   GARDEN   OF  THE   GODS.     145 

In  some  places  the  parallel  ranges  thin  out,  leaving 
a  large  tract  of  level  country  quite  embosomed  be- 
tween snow-ridges,  and,  so  to  speak,  alcoved  into  the 
very  heart  of  the  system.  These  are  the  "Parks;" 
and  they  form  one  of  the  most  interesting  as  well  as 
characteristic  features  of  the  Rocky  Mountain  scen- 
ery. Formations  of  this  kind  abound  everywhere  in 
these  mountains;  but  the  four  principal  ones  form  a 
series,  running  from  a  point  considerably  northwest 
of  Denver  quite  into  New  Mexico.  They  are  called,  in 
their  order,  North,  Middle,  South,  and  San  Luis  Parks. 
They  more  nearly  resemble  the  green  dells  of  our 
Atlantic  range  than  any  other  parts  of  this ;  but  their 
imitation  is  an  expansion  on  the  scale  of  miles  to  the 
inch.  You  might  set  down  one  of  our  smaller  States 
in  Middle  Park  without  crowding  it. 

The  Parks  are  watered  directly  from  the  snow- 
peaks,  being  indeed  only  the  inner  court  of  those 
peaks,  and  catching  the  droppings  from  their  eaves. 
The  portions  of  the  Parks  most  thoroughly  irrigated, 
remain  beautifully  green  throughout  the  year ;  and 
over  the  whole  region  herbage  is  abundant.  The 
sheltered  situation  of  the  Parks  insure  them  an  equa- 
ble climate;  and  old  hunters  who  have  camped  out 
in  them  for  months  together,  talk  of  life  there  as  an 
earthly  paradise.  It  will  prove  equally  so  to  the  far- 
mer and  grazier  when  Colorado  finds  time  to  develop 
her  agriculture.  For  the  present  they  are  difficult 
of  access,  and  the  most  beautiful  as  well  as  the  richest 
hunting-grounds  in  the  far  West.  Elk,  deer,  and  an- 
telope abound  there ;  wild  animals  of  the  cat  kind, 
headed  by  the  Rocky  Mountain  lion,  are  common  in 
the  wooded  ridges  that  skirt  them;  they  are  not 
stinted  in  respect  to  bears,  wolves,  or  foxes. 
10 


146  THE  HEART  OF  THE  CONTINENT. 

Perhaps,  too,  the  Parks  may  be  said  to  bound  the 
extreme  western  range  of  the  buffalo.  I  saw  a  buf- 
falo skull,  to  be  sure,  on  a  dry,  gravelly  plain  near 
the  Green  River;  and  tradition  still  speaks  of  their 
having  formerly  extended  all  the  way  into  Utah.  But 
the  climate  is  such  an  antiseptic  that  the  remains 
seen  by  me  may  have  been  a  hundred  years  old,  be- 
ing white  as  snow  and  hardly  more  than  a  perfect 
cast  of  head  and  horns  in  the  salts  of  lime.  It  is  cer- 
tainly many  years  since  a  herd  has  crossed  the  moun- 
tains, many  even  since  it  penetrated  them  further 
than  the  Parks.  It  is  not  at  all  an  every-day  matter, 
at  this  time,  to  shoot  a  "mountain  buffalo;"  so  little, 
indeed,  that  I  could  not  get  absolute  certainty  as  to 
whether  he  is  identical  with  the  ordinary  buffalo  of 
the  Plains  or  a  distinct  variety.  Some  of  my  inform- 
ants described  him  as  the  same  in  everything  but 
habitat,  while  others  pronounced  him  much  larger 
and  fiercer.  The  probability  is  that  this  animal  is 
only  a  descendant  from  strays  left  behind  a  herd  that 
crossed  the  mountains,  which  gradually  were  adapted 
to  the  new  conditions  until  they  present  an  entirely 
distinct  variety.  The  mountain  buffalo  is  said  not  to 
be  migratory.  If  this  be  true,  the  loss  of  such  a 
strong  race  instinct  is  of  itself  sufficient  to  form  the 
base  of  a  variety  distinction. 

I  have  been  betrayed  into  the  artistic  error  (or  ex- 
cellence, according  to  your  school)  of  painting  more 
into  my  picture  than  I  could  see  from  my  camp-stool ; 
of  adding  after  experience  to  the  present  facts  of  vis- 
ion. But  to  see  the  Rocky  Mountains  means  so  much 
more  than  the  view  of  any  one  mighty  ridge  or  peak, 
that  I  might  just  as  well  give  its  idea  by  glancing 
across  the  whole  billowy  main  as  by  stopping  short 


PIKE'S  PEAK    AND   THE   GARDEN   OF   THE   GODS.     147 

where  the  undulations  break  on  that  ice-bound  coast 
yonder,  in  clouds  against  the  blue  of  heaven. 

The  divide  we  were  travelling  was  unlike  those  of 
the  Plains,  not  only  in  being  of  much  greater  height 
and  surface,  but  in  its  possession  at  intervals  of  deep 
ravines,  finely  timbered  with  pine,  and  bearing  an 
underbrush  of  scrub-oak.  The  divide  was  outside  of 
the  lowest  Rocky  Mountain  foot-hills,  yet  at  the  East 
it  would  have  been  called  a  mountainous  country  in 
itself.  The  pine  was  getting  rapidly  cleared  away 
from  the  divide  by  teams  and  choppers  for  the  fuel- 
market  of  Denver  We  were  every  now  and  then, 
during  the  forenoon,  passing  great  ox-loads  of  it  on 
their  way  there.  The  oak  was  not  that  black-jack 
usually  recognized  as  the  scrub  variety  in  our  Atlan- 
tic sand  barrens,  but  a  tree  with  a  comparatively  deli- 
cate round-lobed  leaf.  An  innumerable  array  of  un- 
known peas  and  beans  showed  pretty  scentless  flowers 
along  the  road,  in  every  shade  of  purple,  blue,  and 
pink.  In  some  situations  the  ground  was  all  aflame 
with  the  intense  scarlet  flowers  of  "the  paint-brush." 

About  one  o'clock,  we  descended  into  a  valley  of 
the  divide,  about  twenty  miles  from  Denver,  in  which, 
for  the  first  time  on  our  journey,  we  encountered 
those  sculpturesque  freaks  of  geology  which  form  so 
large  a  field  of  interesting  study  throughout  the 
Rocky  Mountains,  and  were  continually  presenting 
themselves  along  our  subsequent  route  to  Salt 
Lake. 

The  steep  sand-bluffs,  down  which  our  course  ran 
from  the  high  plateau  of  the  divide  to  the  valley, 
were  curiously  channeled  into  isolated  groups  and 
masses,  whose  form  gave  every  possible  scope  to  one's 
fancy.  The  simplest  of  these  formations  were  mere 


148      THE  HEART  OF  THE  CONTINENT. 

sinuous  galleries.  Where  the  work  of  excavation  had 
gone  further,  the  sand  rose  in  smooth  cones  or  solitary 
pillars ;  and  in  yet  more  complicated  cases,  the  piles 
took  a  statuesque  shape,  which,  with  a  trifling  effort 
of  imagination,  became  idols,  gypsies  about  their 
camp-fire,  witches,  or  mummies  in  their  coffins.  At 
first  sight  these  formations  were  a  good  deal  of  a 
puzzle  to  me;  but  as  we  advanced,  and  saw  them 
not  only  in  the  various  stages,  but  undergoing  the 
processes  of  production,  their  explanation  became 
possible  on  at  least  one  hypothesis,  to  which  I  will 
refer  further  on. 

A  little  beyond  these  statues,  and  in  such  plain 
sight  of  them  that  their  moonlight  view  must  have 
been  like  having  a  guard  of  honor  composed  of  ghosts, 
we  found  "  The  Pretty  Woman's  Ranch  "  and  its  oc- 
cupants, the  Richardsons.  The  nomenclature  of  new 
settlers  is  unconventionally  direct.  They  do  not  hesi- 
tate to  say  when  they  think  a  woman  is  pretty;  and  I 
am  afraid  they  would  assert  the  opposite,  if  true,  with 
equal  frankness.  There  is  no  doubt  what  their  names 
mean ;  and  when  they  call  a  name,  it  sticks.  All  the 
Richardsons  may  die ;  but  future  travellers  will  have 
no  difficulty  in  knowing  that  a  pretty  woman  was 
once  the  ornament  of  this  solitude,  or  in  finding  the 
exact  place  on  which  to  drop  a  tear  for  the  evanes- 
cence of  all  things  lovely.  It  is  perhaps  no  betrayal 
of  Coloradian  confidence  to  acknowledge  that  Mrs. 
Richardson  is  the  Pretty  Woman  referred  to  in  the 
title.  We  stopped  at  the  ranch  which  she  has  char- 
acterized, to  give  our  horses  their  noon  feed,  take  our 
own  lunch,  and,  let  it  be  confessed,  to  see  the  Pretty 
Woman,  though  of  course  solely  as  a  geographical 
personage.  The  name  is  not  inappropriate. 


PIKE'S  PEAK  AND  THE   GARDEN   OF  THE   GODS.    149 

Richardson,  the  owner  of  a  comfortable  log-house, 
and  the  husband  of  the  ranch's  fair  namesake,  is  so 
good  a  type  of  the  indomitable  class  which  turns  our 
country's  wastes  into  garden  and  pasture,  that  I  can- 
not refrain  from  condensing  into  a  few  lines  the  sim- 
ple account  which,  while  we  were  resting,  he  gave  us 
of  his  toilsome  and  eventful  history. 

He  began  his  manhood  (he  is  now  a  bronzed,  wiry 
man  of  three  or  four  and  thirty)  by  entering  the 
vineyard  business  with  his  father  and  brothers,  near 
Catskill,  on  the  Hudson  Eiver.  After  a  year  or  two, 
the  fever  of  adventure  got  into  his  blood,  and  he  set 
out  to  seek  a  wider  field.  His  way  was  westward,  as 
that  fever  always  drives  an  American,  and  his  first 
halting-place  a  settlement  in  Wisconsin.  Here  he 
established  a  nursery,  but  was  presently  ruined  (or 
what  an  Eastern  man  would  call  so)  through  a  pro- 
tracted season  of  bad  weather  and  the  failure  of  his 
trees.  Taking  all  that  he  could  scrape  together  of 
the  remnant  of  his  property,  he  moved  directly  to 
Denver,  and  opened,  among  the  earliest  there,  a  store 
for  the  sale  of  groceries  and  provisions.  Here  bad 
weather  came  to  him  in  the  human  form.  He  failed 
again  by  trusting  out  large  bills  to  a  set  of  scamps 
who  were  ostensibly  buying  an  outfit  to  commence 
business  in  the  mines,  but  in  reality  only  wanted  it 
to  enable  them  to  flee  the  territory,  and  get  beyond 
their  creditors.  They  absconded,  leaving  him  quite 
cleaned  out,  without  a  particle  either  of  pay  or  secu- 
rity. Indomitable  as  ever,  Richardson  wasted  no  time 
in  bemoaning  himself,  but  pushed  still  further  beyond 
civilization  to  his  present  place,  determined  to  wring 
out  of  nature  the  justice  he  could  not  get  from  man. 
The  divide  in  whose  valley  he  lies,  is  the  natural 


150       THE  HEART  OF  THE  CONTINENT. 

thoroughfare  of  all  travel  from  Denver  to  the  Arkan- 
sas ;  and  he  occupies  an  excellent  position  on  it  for 
the  keeping  of  a  "  Pilgrims '  "  hostelry.  Oats  or  corn 
for  horses  sell  here  at  fifty  cents  the  single  noon  feed 
(six  pounds,  or  nearly  corresponding  to  our  usual  four 
quarts);  so  that  it  will  not  surprise  one  to  hear  that 
by  the  end  of  his  first  year  in  the  divide,  Richardson 
had  laid  by  two  thousand  dollars.  But  ill-luck  had 
not  done  with  him.  With  his  savings  he  bought  a 
handsome  lot  of  blood-cattle,  and  had  just  finished  his 
preparations  for  adding  the  business  of  a  grazier  to 
that  of  a  landlord,  when  the  vendor  of  the  stock  was 
discovered  to  be  a  thief,  and  Richardson's  title  to  them 
smashed  by  the  appearance  of  an  owner  with  the 
proper  documents.  I  know  numbers  of  reputable  busi- 
ness men  who  at  this  juncture  would  have  refused  to 
play  any  more  at  cogged  dice  with  Fortune,  and  wound 
up  their  affairs  with  the  summary  process  of  a  pistol. 
The  idea  never  seems  to  have  suggested  itself  to  Rich- 
ardson. When  we  stopped  at  the  ranch,  he  had  saved 
two  thousand  dollars  more,  and  invested  it  in  a  stock 
of  blood-sheep,  which  were  then  on  the  way  to  him 
from  the  Missouri  River.  If  I  had  returned  overland 
from  California,  I  should  certainly  have  made  another 
visit  to  the  Pretty  Woman's  Ranch,  to  satisfy  my 
mind  about  those  sheep.  I  felt  as  if  it  would  be  a 
pleasure  to  pitch  in  and  do  a  day's  sheep-tending  for  a 
man  who  had  kept  such  a  brave  face  toward  his  fate. 
I  sincerely  hope  that  his  sheep  arrived  safely,  and 
that  they  now  thrive  and  multiply  to  the  extent 
which  his  sanguine  nature  expected.  I  believe  the 
hope  fully  justified  by  the  character  of  the  country. 
There  is  every  reason  why  a  flock  of  healthy  sheep 
should  do  admirably  on  the  dry  grass  of  the  divide 


PIKE'S  PEAK  AND  THE  GARDEN   OF   THE  GODS.    151 

and  more  succulent  nibblings  along  the  water-courses, 
or,  if  protected  against  wild  beasts,  even  in  the  scan- 
tier pasturage  along  the  lower  mountain  foot-hills. 
The  character  of  the  soil  and  climate  is  such  that 
foot-rot  would  be  most  unlikely  to  originate  here ;  and 
a  few  years  would  so  thoroughly  acclimate  the  stock 
as  to  make  both  its  fleece  and  mutton  valuable  addi- 
tions to  the  revenue  of  any  virtually  unlimited  land- 
proprietor  like  Kichardson.  It  is  unnecessary  to 
praise  mountain  mutton  to  any  man  who  has  ever 
eaten  Welsh  saddle,  or  chops  from  the  Sierra  Nevada. 
Stimulated  by  a  cruel  curiosity,  I  ventured  to  ask 
Richardson  if  he  would  be  discouraged  supposing  his 
sheep  failed.  He  answered  no;  that  in  that  case  he'd 
only  return  to  the  East,  where  he  knew  he  was  wanted, 
and  go  into  the  vineyard  business  again.  He  certainly 
had  the  greatest  reasons  which  a  man,  according  as 
he  is  gritty  or  not,  can  have  for  courage  or  discour- 
agement, a  wife  and  one  little  boy  three  years  old, — 
a  child  of  astonishing  precocity,  who  insisted  that  his 
first  name  was  Denver  City,  and  would  not  be  paci- 
fied until  we  had  let  him  sit  down  with  iis  after  din- 
ner, and  smoke  a  pipe  in  proof  of  our  confidence  in 
that  assertion. 

We  paid  the  worthy  ranchman  for  our  noon  feed, 
and  took  his  cheerful  philosophy  gratis.  The  debt  we 
incur  by  seeing  such  men  is  one  that  cannot  be  paid. 
Their  memory  is  a  vigor.  You  are  better  for  having 
talked  with  them;  you  make  other  people  better, 
and  the  benefit  goes  on  rolling  up  compound  interest. 
The  atmosphere  of  the  Pretty  Woman's  Ranch  is  an 
anti-periodic  to  blue-devils.  They  certainly  will  not 
recur  the  day  .one  baits  there. 

About  a  mile  and  a  half  southwest  of  Richardson's 


152      THE  HEART  OF  THE  CONTINENT. 

is  a  broad  field,  situated  on  the  table-land,  which  in 
comparatively  small  compass  contains  some  of  the 
most  interesting  subjects  for  the  geologist  which  are 
to  be  found  in  this  country  or  the  world.  The  entire 
tract  is  a  fossil  forest.  Its  trees,  to  be  sure,  are  lev- 
eled with  the  ground ;  but  their  stumps  and  many  of 
their  prostrate  trunks  remain  in  a  condition  of  stony 
metamorphosis  which  may  challenge  the  Enchanted 
Groves  of  fairy  lore  and  the  Arabic  legend  of  Alad- 
din's ruby  fruit.  Nothing  can  exceed  the  perfection 
with  which  the  original  vegetable  characteristics  have 
been  retained  in  the  petrified  remains.  Some  of  the 
trunks,  full  ten  feet  in  length,  have  become  so  thor- 
oughly infiltrated  with  silicates  (chiefly  of  aluminum, 
having  iron  for  their  tinge),  that  at  first  sight  they 
look  more  like  exquisite  imitations  of  trees  in  jasper, 
agate,  or  chalcedony,  than  the  metamorphosed  bodies 
of  trees  themselves.  The  translation  from  ligneous 
to  stony  substance  has  been  so  gradual,  yet  so  per- 
fect, that  you  are  reminded  of  the  famous  jack-knife 
which  retained  its  identity  with  a  new  blade  and  a  new 
handle.  Probably  nothing  does  in  reality  exist  of 
these  trees'  original  tissue ;  but  each  portion  of  that 
tissue  survived  just  long  enough  to  act  as  a  mould, 
and  determine  every  faintest  marking  on  the  flinty 
jelly  whose  consolidated  mass  substituted  it.  The  re- 
sult is  that  we  have  in  silicates  of  aluminum  and  iron 
as  perfect  a  representation  as  could  be  given  by  orig- 
inal vegetable  matter,  of  cotton-woods,  firs,  and  pines, 
throughout  all  the  sizes  attained  by  those  growths. 
Nothing  among  mineral  treasures  can  exceed  the 
beauty  of  some  specimens  we  found  here.  Looking 
at  the  cross  section  of  one  of  the  stone  saplings,  the 
merest  tyro  saw  at  a  glance  the  history  of  its  growth, 


PIKE'S  PEAK  AND  THE   GARDEN  OF  THE   GODS.     153 

and  the  position  which  it  had  occupied  in  the  arbo- 
real scale,  —  whether  it  was  an  ordinary  exogenous 
tree  or  a  conifer, — and  often,  too,  the  age  at  which 
it  became  stone-enchanted.  Its  pores,  its  medullary 
rays,  its  pith,  its  rings  of  growth,  and,  in  some  cases, 
its  outer  bark,  were  preserved  as  distinctly  as  they 
were  the  last  day  it  budded ;  and  though  it  possessed 
the  lustrous  flinty  fracture  common  to  the  semi- 
precious stones,  across  the  sharp  edges,  faithful  to  its 
original  direction,  ran  the  old  grain  of  the  wood  as 
plain  as  ever.  I  think  it  was  here  that  I  felt,  for  the 
first  time  in  my  life,  the  sensation  of  avarice,  and  at 
the  same  time  realized  the  sternness  of  that  double 
test  of  values,  portability,  convertibility.  It  hurt  me 
to  go  away,  and  leave  that  fieldful  of  gems, — ten- 
fold more  interesting  to  me  than  if  they  had  been 
diamonds,  —  simply  because  I  had  no  means  of  trans- 
porting so  much  as  one  poor  cart-load  of  the  finest  to 
a  place  where  they  would  give  all  the  delight,  win  all 
the  admiration,  of  which  they  are  capable.  Of  course 
their  beauty  is  greatest  to  a  mineralogist ;  but  they 
possess  a  beauty  of  marking  and  color  quite  apart 
from  this,  being  intrinsically  among  the  handsomest 
specimens  of  the  agate  and  allied  stones  which  I  ever 
saw  in  cabinet  or  show-case. 

It  is  somewhat  difficult  to  account  for  this  curious 
metamorphosis  upon  any  of  the  commonly  received 
theories  of  petrifaction.  The  stumps  are  evidently 
in  situ ;  so  they  cannot  have  been  thrown  up  by  any 
natural  convulsion  from  a  lower  stratum,  where  they 
had  been  embedded  and  fossilized.  To  imagine  them 
petrified  by  long  submersion  in  a  flood  highly  charged 
with  silicates,  is  only  to  make  another  difficulty ;  for 
in  that  case  what  has  become  of  the  detritus  which 


154       THE  HEART  OF  THE  CONTINENT. 

should  surround  them,  and  why  did  these  exceptional 
phenomena  occur  here  when  the  lower  ground,  which 
must  have  been  simultaneously  under  water,  exhibits 
no  trace  of  similar  operations  ?  The  most  probable 
hypothesis  may  be  that  the  whole  tract  was  once  cov- 
ered with  strongly  silicated  springs,  and  that  as  fast 
as  death  deprived  a  tree  of  its  elaborating  and  selec- 
tive apparatus,  it  became  a  mere  mechanically  acting 
bundle  of  capillaries,  and  sucked  up  the  liquor  of  im- 
mortality, which  made  it  a  gem.  I  succeeded  in  bring- 
ing away  but  a  few  specimens.  They  are  small,  but 
among  the  most  exquisite  for  color,  lustre,  and  repro- 
duction of  the  original  tissue.  They  vary  through 
every  shade  of  purple,  brown,  yellow,  red,  and  white ; 
and  almost  any  chance  specimen  that  might  be  col- 
lected, would  cut  into  an  elegant  ornament  for  the 
toilet  or  writing-table,  for  seal-ring  or  sleeve-buttons, 
of  the  kind  for  which  blood-stone  or  onyx  is  usually 
employed. 

Thirty  miles  from  Denver,  on  a  table-land  of  the 
divide,  we  came  to  a  peculiar  hill  of  the  butte  kind, 
a  single  cone,  rising  abrupt  and  solitary  out  of  the 
level  plain  to  the  height  of  about  four  hundred  feet, 
and  crowned  with  a  rude  cube  of  red  argillaceous 
sandstone,  nearly  five  hundred  feet  in  circumference 
and  a  hundred  feet  in  altitude.  Vasquez,  a  Spanish 
guide  in  Pike's  Expedition,  gave  it  the  name*  of  "  Cas- 
tle Rock,"  or  rather  the  no-name,  since  new  settlers 
are  not  sufficiently  in  communication  with  each  other 
to  be  bothered  about  originality,  and  have  illustrated 
the  proverbial  coincidence  of  great  minds  by  fasten- 
ing this  appellation  on  every  one  of  the  multitudi- 
nous castellated  formations  between  the  tertiary  clay 
of  the  Platte  region  and  the  granite  mountains  of  the 


PIKE'S    PEAK  AND  THE   GARDEN  OF  THE   GODS.        155 

Pacific.     Still,  at  a  distance,  this  Castle  Kock  belies 
the  title  as  little  as  any  of  its  namesakes. 

Accompanied  by  one  of  the  gentlemen  of  my  own 
party,  I  climbed  to  the  very  summit,  while  the  ambu- 
lance halted  for  us  below.  We  found  the  immense 
stone  which  formed  the  capital  of  the  cone  bare  of 
soil  and  vegetation,  save  in  crevices.  On  all  sides  it 
overhung  the  earth  mound  on  which  it  rested  to  the 
distance  of  several  feet,  thus  getting  a  look  of  being 
poised  upon  its  centre,  just  insecure  enough  to  in- 
crease its  picturesque  effect.  By  insinuating  ourselves 
into  fissures  and  making  bold  use  of  projecting  knobs, 
we  contrived  to  work  our  way  around  its  sides  to  the 
upper  surface.  Here  we  found  a  fine  breezy  platform, 
perfectly  level,  and  commanding  a  view  in  every  di- 
rection, which  amply  repaid  our  trouble.  Here  and 
there  through  the  gray  Plains  we  could  see  a  flock  of 
antelope  feeding  quietly;  one  side  of  our  pedestal 
was  alive  with  screaming  hawks,  who  built  their  col- 
ony of  nests  there,  nowise  counting  on  intrusion  from 
such  visitors  as  we ;  we  could  see  the  little  hares 
playing  below  us  in  the  ashen  furze  which  thatched 
the  cone ;  and  we  could  have  tossed  a  stone  on  the 
roof  of  the  ambulance,  dwindled  to  a  speck,  where  it 
stood  awaiting  us  at  the  foot  of  the  butte.  The  de- 
clining sun  was  bathing  the  great  brown  mountains 
in  an  amber  glow ;  and  still,  far  off  to  the  west  and 
southerly,  Old  Pike  was  baring  his  giant  forehead  of 
white  and  crystal,  through  a  gap  in  our  nearer  ranges, 
to  the  common  splendor.  It  was  the  quietest,  sunniest, 
most  satisfying  mount  of  vision  we  had  yet  climbed. 

We  came  down  to  find  that  the  enterprising  buck- 
board  had  come  up  with  our  ambulance,  stopped  to 
put  Castle  Rock  in  our  artist's  sketch-book,  and  pre- 


156       THE  HEART  OF  THE  CONTINENT. 

ceded  us  in  the  direction  of  Pike's  Peak  and  supper. 
We  hurried  on  after  it,  and  about  nightfall  came  to  a 
comfortable  log-house,  situated  near  the  head  of  Plum 
Creek,  here  a  mountain  brook  of  considerable  size, 
and  not  far  from  the  junction  of  the  divide  on  which 
we  had  been  travelling  with  that  which  separates  be- 
tween the  affluents  of  the  Platte  and  of  the  Arkan- 
sas. The  house  is  a  neat  structure  of  sawed  timber, 
all  of  it  got  out  in  a  steam  saw-mill,  imported  by  the 
proprietor,  a  man  named  Sprague,  who,  like  Rich- 
ardson, increases  the  income  of  a  ranchman  by  the 
entertainment  of  pilgrims  such  as  we.  Here  we  had 
an  excellent  supper;  and  when  we  discovered  that 
there  were  not  enough  beds  to  go  round,  those  who 
were  left  out  camped  cheerily  down  on  their  blankets, 
and  all  slept  equally  well  till  sunrise. 

We  had  now  reached  the  grand  divide  between  the 
Platte  and  the  Arkansas.  It  seemed  rather  a  spur 
from  the  mountains  than  one  of  their  attendant  foot- 
hills. Immediately  about  Sprague's  the  scenery  was 
wildly  rocky.  The  house  stood  at  the  foot  of  a  mag- 
nificent gray  crag,  seven  hundred  feet  high,  densely 
wooded  with  evergreen  along  a  series  of  gulches 
which  channeled  its  face  at  angles  that  nearly 
made  climbing  impossible.  Plum  Creek  was  quite 
embowered  in  the  willows  and  willow-leaved  cotton- 
woods,  which  belong  to  the  never-failing  water-courses 
of  the  Rocky  range.  The  valley  through  which  it 
flowed  was  as  green  as  a  June  meadow  in  the  East ; 
and  the  sweet,  pure  air  was  of  itself  enough  to  tell 
us  that  we  had  risen  far  above  the  level  of  Denver. 

We  left  Sprague's  early  in  the  morning,  well  satis- 
fied with  his  accommodations,  and  glad  to  have  found, 
so  deep  in  these  solitudes  a  man  who  had  evidently 


PIKE'S  PEAK  AND  THE   GARDEN  OF  THE   GODS.     157 

preserved  many  of  the  ideals  of  civilized  life,  who 
took  a  number  of  papers  and  magazines,  had  a  good 
library,  and  was  successfully  toiling  to  make  himself 
a  picturesque  and  comfortable  home. 

A  couple  of  miles  beyond  Sprague's,  the  rocks, 
which  had  been  menacing  us  on  the  right,  withdrew 
further  west,  and  left  a  long  sloping  embankment 
next  us,  crowned  by  another  of  those  remarkable  ge- 
ological freaks  which  I  have  before  mentioned.  On 
the  plateau  of  the  embankment,  and  not  far  from  its 
edge,  stood  Windsor  Castle. 

The  resemblance  was  astonishing.  Towers,  battle- 
ments, imposing  faqade,  proportions,  all  were  remark- 
ably imitated.  If  the  bareness  about  it  had  been 
broken  up  by  fine  old  trees,  and  the  royal  colors  had 
floated  over  the  flag-staff  turret,  one  might  have  been 
compelled  to  think  twice  before  asserting  that  this 
was  not  the  palace  of  the  Old  World  transported 
bodily  by  magic  to  America.  The  structure  stood  BO 
abruptly  perpendicular  out  of  the  table-land,  was  so 
entirely  unsupported  and  unexplained,  that  it  was  al- 
most impossible  to  imagine  it  a  mere  mass  of  Rocky 
Mountain  conglomerate  or  sandstone.  Our  road  ran 
within  half  a  mile  of  it,  and  at  that  distance  little  fancy 
was  necessary  to  discern  regular  rows  of  windows, 
stately  door-ways,  and  all  other  details  requisite  for 
completing  the  realization.  It  is  very  difficult  to  get 
any  idea  from  an  engraving  of  the  impression  pro- 
duced by  these  castellated  formations  of  the  West. 
If  the  picture  makes  its  mimicry  as  strong  as  the  for- 
mation has  it,  it  is  apt  to  look  less  like  a  good  picture 
of  the  formation  than  a  bad  picture  of  the  architec- 
ture or  sculpture  imitated. 

The  divide  continued  tolerably  level  for  about  ten 


158       THE  HEART  OF  THE  CONTINENT. 

miles  further,  flanked  on  our  right  by  a  series  of  lofty 
undulations,  crested  with  pine  and  fir,  leading  into 
the  Rocky  Mountain  foot-hills.  An  occasional  spot  of 
more  brilliant  yellow  on  their  amber  slopes  below  the 
tree-line  betrayed  an  antelope  grazing  in  the  sunshine ; 
but  otherwise  the  loneliness  of  the  view  was  intense. 
An  everlasting  Sabbath  bathed  the  silent  brown  moun- 
tains, climbing  range  on  range  to  the  far  glittering 
snow.  They  were  like  the  stairs  of  heaven  after  the 
last  soul  had  ascended  out  of  earth.  Not  the  faintest 
cry  of  bird  or  hum  of  insect  broke  the  stillness  of  the 
shining  hills  next  us.  It  was  so  strange  to  look 
southward  over  placid  fields,  yellow  with  noon,  and 
be  sure  that,  in  all  that  great  receding  stretch,  man 
was  a  wanderer,  a  guest,  and  not  a  master ;  to  think, 
as  some  deep  gorge  caught  our  eye,  far  up  the  range, 
what  an  unknown  region  lay  there,  virgin  to  man's 
tread ;  that  it  might  be  ages  ere  its  quiet  were  dis- 
turbed ;  and  that  this  was  but  one  small  spot  among 
myriads  as  mysterious  and  inaccessible.  The  moun- 
tains seemed  hopelessly  apart  from  us,  like  the  glo- 
ries we  try  to  grasp  in  a  dream ;  yet  this  very  hope- 
lessness gave  them  all  a  dream's  grandeur,  and  made 
them  seem  rather  great  thoughts  than  great  things. 
To  see  the  Rocky  Mountains  in  bright  sunlight,  to 
drink  from  the  vast,  voiceless  happiness  which  they 
seem  set  there  to  embody,  is  one  of  the  strangest 
mixtures  of  pleasure  and  pain  in  all  scenery. 

On  one  of  the  rolling  hills  of  the  divide  we  stopped 
to  get  what  we  considered  the  finest  view  of  Pike's 
Peak,  obtained  during  our  trip.  We  stopped  our 
horses  for  an  hour  at  the  foot  of  the  hill,  and  ascended 
on  foot  to  enjoy  the  sight,  while  our  artist  took  his 
box  from  the  buck-board  and  made  a  color  study. 


PIKE'S  PEAK  AND  THE   GARDEN  OF  THE  GODS-    159 

In  the  midst  of  this  virgin  solitude,  Nature  kept 
repeating  fantastic  freaks  of  sculpture  and  of  architec- 
ture, as  if  she  were  diverting  herself  with  trifles  from 
the  strain  of  that  mighty  mood  in  which  she  brought 
forth  the  mountains.  The  strangeness  of  effect  pro- 
duced by  coming  suddenly  on  ruined  temples  or 
Moorish  summer-houses  in  that  untamed  solitude,  and 
against  that  tremendous  background,  is  quite  inde- 
scribable. You  thought  you  were  in  the  most  untrod- 
den wild  of  a  late  discovered  continent ;  but  here  is 
Luxor,  here  Palmyra,  here  the  Parthenon,  Nineveh, 
and  Baalbec.  In  one  place  the  tawny  columns  of  the 
ruin  were  arranged  at  regular  intervals  around  an  ob- 
long ;  a  well  defined,  though  broken  pediment,  rested 
on  the  front  row ;  and  about  the  bases  of  the  entire 
columns  lay  splintered  shafts  and  shattered  capitals. 
There  was  such  unity  in  the  design,  and  such  a  won- 
derfully natural  posture  in  the  ruins  of  this  structure, 
that  at  the  moment  of  first  sight,  its  character  abso- 
lutely posed  one.  Further  on,  a  charming  little  coun- 
try-house was  nestled  in  just  the  nook  an  artist  would 
have  chosen,  —  an  indentation  of  the  hill-side,  under 
the  shadow  of  some  fine  evergreens.  But  the  main 
architecture  was  all  templar  or  monumental,  as  if  Na- 
ture, even  in  her  play,  had  not  quite  got  down  to  the 
secular  level  from  her  mountain  inspiration.  But, 
though  religious,  she  was  still  catholic  in  her  taste, 
and  moulded  in  Athenian  or  Egyptian,  Gothic  or  Syr- 
ian, styles  with  equal  largeness  of  appreciation.  In 
these  conglomerate  structures.  I  saw  models  belonging 
to  the  art  of  almost  every  country  and  time. 

About  noon  we  came  to  a  small  trickling  rill,  which 
was  the  first  water  flowing  to  the  Arkansas  from  the 
grand  divide.  It  was  an  affluent  of  the  Monument 


160       THE  HEART  OF  THE  CONTINENT. 

Creek,  which  we  were  to  intersect  later  in  the  after- 
noon. It  was  a  miserable  little  rivulet.  Any  Eastern 
gutter  would  have  leaked  a  healthier  one,  on  an  ordi- 
nary drizzly  day.  But  water  is  precious  in  this  al- 
most rainless  region ;  and  even  this  poor  rill  has  a 
family  dependent  upon  it,  —  a  family  which  takes  in 
travellers  too.  There  is  a  small  log-house  here,  with 
a  board  over  the  door,  on  which,  in  rude  black  letters, 
appears  the  inscription,  "P.  Garlick."  One  of  our 
company  was  anxious  to  know  if  P  stood  for  Pill ;  as 
in  such  case  it  was  an  appropriate  place  for  that  noted 
party  to  live.  The  actual  Mr.  Garlick  was  not  aware 
of  any  member  of  his  family  with  that  Christian 
name.  He  himself  was  a  kindly  dispositioned  man  of 
forty,  who  had  edged  over  into  Colorado  from  his  na- 
tive Virginia,  taking  Missouri  on  the  way,  and  adding 
a  sort  of  Pike  flavor  to  his  original  chivalry.  It  was 
surprising  to  see  either  Pike  or  Virginia  in  such  good 
flesh  as  he.  He  weighed  about  two  hundred,  though 
in  height  not  much  over  five  feet  six.  He  was  appar- 
ently contented  with  his  lot,  and  complained  of  noth- 
ing except  a  pair  of  frozen  feet,  which  had  left  him 
badly  maimed  the  past  winter.  It  required  an  easy 
soul  to  put  up  with  that  cabin,  in  the  absence  of 
any  energetic  soul  to  mend  it.  It  seemed  miserably 
dilapidated,  had  broken  floors  or  none  at  all,  was 
chinked  by  numerous  yawning  crevices,  and  in  the 
winter  must  have  been  about  as  much  shelter  as  a 
good  picket-fence.  Still,  in  this  house  a  family  of 
two  grown  people  and  their  children  were  satisfied  to 
spend  their  lives.  I  found  it  easy  to  tell,  in  all  our 
journey  through  the  wilds,  which  of  the  cabins  were 
settled  from  the  Free,  and  which  from  the  Slave  States. 
Perhaps,  in  justice  to  the  present  occupants  of  the 


PIKE'S  PEAK  AND   THE   GARDEN   OF  THE   GODS.    161 

cabin,  I  ought  to  mention  that  they  have  struggled 
under  one  great  disadvantage.  We  have  noticed  in 
the  case  of  Richardson's  place  how  plain-spoken  Col- 
oradian  nomenclature  is  when  intended  to  be  compli- 
mentary ;  but  it  no  more  hesitates  to  tell  the  uncom- 
plimentary facts  of  a  case.  During  the  occupancy  of 
Mr.  P.  Garlick's  predecessors,  this  cabin  got  the  name 
of  "  the  Dirty  Woman's  Ranch."  I  fear  that  the  mul- 
titudinous seas,  aided  by  what  little  water  Mr.  P.  Gar- 
lick  can  bring  to  the  task,  will  not  wash  clean  the  rep- 
utation of  that  ranch. 

If  it  were  possible  for  a  Virginian  Pike  to  be  as 
neat  as  a  Connecticut  housewife,  Mr.  P.  Garlick  could 
not  redeem  the  reputation  of  the  Dirty  Woman's 
Ranch.  What's  in  a  name  ?  Dreadful  things !  I 
heard  one  Coloradian  say  to  another,  "  Did  you  see 
the  Dirty  Woman?"  and  the  other  answered,  "No; 
she  isn't  at  the  Dirty  Woman's  Ranch  any  more." 
What  an  acknowledgment  of  the  hopelessness  of  Mr. 
Garlick's  job  !  The  ranch  is  still  the  Dirty  Woman's, 
though  the  Dirty  Woman  has  left  forever.  I  was  in- 
terested to  see  the  Dirty  Woman  as  a  geographical 
landmark ;  but  my  nearest  approach  to  such  a  view 
was  when  a  Colorado  City  friend  showed  me  a  very 
respectable  looking  young  woman  on  horseback,  with 
the  words,  "  That's  the  Dirty  Woman's  daughter."  I 
think  she  must  have  been  an  improvement  on  the  first 
generation,  which  was  said  to  have  licked  the  milk- 
pans,  stirred  people's  tea  with  an  unwashed  finger, 
and  deserved  the  inseparable  soubriquet  mentioned, 
in  multitudinous  other  ways  too  unpleasant  to  chron- 
icle. •  Mr.  P.  Garlick  seemed  to  be  aware  of  the  name 
of  his  ranch,  referring  to  the  circumstances  with  a 

subdued  air,  as  if  he  had  once  entertained  hard  feel- 
11 


162       THE  HEART  OF  THE  CONTINENT. 

ings  toward  the  Dirty  Woman  for  living  there  before 
him,  but  had  now  partly  succeeded  in  living  the  thing 
down. 

We  lunched  on  our  own  stores  in  the  wagon,  and  I 
then  stretched  myself  prone  on  a  settee  in  the  Dirty 
Woman's  front  cabin,  with  my  head  upon  my  hands, 
that  in  the  intervals  between  napping  I  might  detect 
the  movements  of  certain  occupants  which  I  sus- 
pected in  the  cushion.  In  the  midst  of  my  siesta  I 
was  awakened  at  once  by  lively  bites  and  a  loud  roar, 
and  jumped  up  to  discover  that  Mr.  P.  Garlick  was  in 
convulsions  at  a  broad  charcoal  sketch  of  my  sprawl- 
ing figure  made  on  the  Dirty  Woman's  door.  The 
likeness,  considering  point  of  view,  was  very  excel- 
lent, and  showed  such  a  lively  feeling  for  boots  that 
in  justice  to  our  artist,  I  would  insist  on  having  it  en- 
graved here,  only  I  could  not  bear  to  rob  Mr.  P.  Gar- 
lick  of  the  cartoon.  On  the  other  hand,  so  magnani- 
mous was  I  that  I  explained  to  him  its  value  as  the 
work  of  one  of  our  rising  painters,  and  counseled 
him  to  keep  it  always.  It  would  be  a  legacy  for  his 
children  when  the  P.  Garlicks  had  become  Coloradian 
noblemen,  with  a  gallery  in  their  palace.  He  seemed 
to  appreciate  what  I  asked  him,  and  promised  me  that 
he  would  never  wash  the  sketch  off.  I  don't  think  he 
would  if  I  hadn't  asked  him. 

For  a  couple  of  hours  after  leaving  the  Dirty  Wom- 
an's, we  travelled  over  a  series  of  low  spurs  and 
broad  sand-plains.  Many  of  the  former,  along  the 
course  of  Monument  Creek,  were  so  covered  with  imi- 
tations of  sepulchral  sculpture,  which  showed  to  fine 
advantage  through  sombre  groves  of  pine,  that  illusion 
again  became  almost  deception,  and  we  might  have 
been  excused  for  fancying  ourselves  in  the  burying- 


PIKE'S   PEAK   AND   THE    GARDEN   OF  THE   GODS.     163 

ground  of  some  extinct  race.  My  remarks  regarding 
Nature's  catholicity  of  architecture  in  these  simula- 
tions apply  equally  to  her  sculpture.  This  marvelous 
cemetery  contained  obelisks,  little  baby  grave-stones 
a  foot  high,  truncated  columns,  shafts,  and  urns,  ped- 
estaled statues,  plain  horizontal  tablets,  and  royal 
sarcophagi.  There  was  a  variety  about  the  style,  and 
a  naturalness  about  the  grouping  of  the  monuments, 
which  seemed  well-nigh  inexplicable  on  the  ground 
of  mere  geologic  chance. 

The  broad  plains  which  alternated  with  these  spurs 
were  alike  distressing  to  our  horses  and  ourselves. 
They  were  expanses  of  very  deep  and  almost  entirely 
barren  sand,  fenced  a  couple  of  miles  to  the  west  by 
high  sandy  bluffs  just  under  the  foothills.  On  this 
tract  the  day  for  the  first  time  seemed  oppressively 
warm,  a  state  of  things  not  bettered  by  a  dry  wind 
blowing  sand  into  our  eyes.  Our  wheels  sank  half- 
way to  the  hubs ;  and  large  horse-flies  began  to  swarm 
about  our  poor  animals,  settling  faster  than  the  whip 
could  knock  them  off,  and  making  the  blood  trickle 
at  every  bite. 

The  barrenest  tract  which  we  crossed,  bore  abun- 
dance both  of  the  cacti  and  soap-weed.  Most  of  the 
former  which  I  noticed,  belonged  either  to  the  flat  or 
globular  species  ;  but  there  occasionally  appeared  one 
of  the  branching  varieties,  which  are  found  at  their 
highest  development  considerably 'further  south,  in 
the  gigantic  "  candelabra.".  In  Mexico  I  afterward 
saw  them  attain  the  dimensions  of  a  good-sized  tree ; 
standing  thirty  feet  high,  and  twenty  feet  in  circuit 
round  the  branches.  The  soap-weed  ( Yucca  Fifamen- 
tosa)  is  the  plant  known  in  Florida  as  the  "Spanish 
bayonet/'  bearing  a  profusion  of  tough,  lance-shaped 


164  THE   HEART   OF  THE   CONTINENT. 

leaves,  armed  at  the  extremity  with  a  thorn  almost 
steely  in  its  hardness  and  sharpness.  A  hedge  of 
these  plants  is  the  most  complete  shelter  against  wild 
beasts  or  the  assault  of  enemies.  They  are  little  used 
for  purposes  of  defense,  their  main  utility  existing  in 
the  mucilaginous  juice  of  their  roots,  which  the  Mex- 
icans employ  instead  of  soap  for  laundry  purposes. 
A  somewhat  protracted  acquaintance  with  Mexicans 
leads  me  to  question  whether  the  supply  of  yucca 
for  that  purpose  does  not  considerably  exceed  the 
demand. 

On  this  waste,  for  the  first  time  since  reaching 
Fremont's  Orchard,  we  found  a  large  colony  of  prai- 
rie-dogs. They  were  very  saucy,  and  kept  tempting 
us  to  shoot  at  them,  with  the  usual  result  of  wasting 
ammunition.  Their  mounds  covered  an  area  of  sev- 
eral square  miles,  and  all  this  surface  was  alive  with 
their  chattering  frolic. 

Apropos  of  these  dogs  and  their  habits,  our  party 
got  at  issue  on  a  point  which  I  have  never  considered 
entirely  settled.  Among  all  the  old  plainsmen  I  found 
a  firm  belief  that  the  prairie-dogs  are  not  only  gre- 
garious among  themselves,  but  with  owls  and  rattle- 
snakes. Mr.  Pierce  assured  me  that  this  notion  was 
an  entire  fallacy.  I  had  a  great  respect  for  his  re- 
searches and  opinion,  but  could  not  make  up  my 
mind  to  discard  the  popular  view  of  the  subject.  I 
had  heard  repeated  stories  of  both  owls  and  snakes 
being  driven  out  of  holes  where  men  were  digging  to 
examine  a  dog- town.  I  found  at  Kelly's  Station  a 
ranchman  who,  the  year  previous,  had  been  badly 
bitten  by  a  rattlesnake  while  incautiously  feeling 
down  a  burrow  into  which  he  had  just  chased  a  prai- 
rie-dog. I  am,  however,  perfectly  willing  to  abandon 


PIKE'S  PEAK  AND  THE  GARDEN   OF  THE   GODS.     165 

the  theory  on  proof,  though  its  associations  have  be- 
come pleasantly  comic  and  poetical,  through  the  little 
domestic  scenes  which  I  observed  at  twilight  in  dog- 
towns  along  the  Platte.  It  may  be  merely  a  coin- 
cidence that  owls  and  dogs  are  found  so  constantly 
about  the  same  burrows ;  it  may  be  that  their  bur- 
rows are  contiguous,  but  not  shared.  I  am  only  re- 
peating what  my  eyes  saw,  or  thought  they  saw,  a 
great  many  times.  When  the  sun  was  well  down, 
and  a  purple  gray  began  softening  hill,  and  sky,  and 
river,  the  prairie-dogs  who  had  been  chattering  their 
cheery  good-night  for  the  past  hour  in  the  sand-field 
at  our  side,  whisked  their  last  tail  within  the  burrows, 
and  became  silent  all  at  once.  Then,  to  all  appearance 
out  of  the  same  burrows,  came  one  by  one  a  troop  of 
little  grayish  owls,  who,  with  the  low  stealthy  flight 
peculiar  to  night  -  prowling  species,  began  gliding 
about  the  sand-banks  and  grassy  borders  of  the  river. 
Every  now  and  then,  one  of  them  returned  to  the 
dog-town,  dropped  down  at  the  entrance  to  some 
burrow,  and  went  out  of  sight.  For  mile  after  mile, 
as  long  as  we  travelled  through  dog-towns,  and  had 
light  enough  to  see  the  holes,  these  movements  kept 
occurring.  So  that  I  came  to  regard  the  dogs  as  the 
boarding-house  keepers  of  animal  society ;  wondered 
whether  they  ever  got  into  rows  with  their  lodgers, 
were  taken  in  by  swindling  owls  pretending  to  large 
means,  or  let  their  apartments  to  crusty  owls  who 
grumbled  about  the  way  their  beds  were  made.  The 
owls  became  to  me  little  Quaker  bachelors  going  out 
for  an  evening  stroll,  or  returning  cozily  at  a  not  too 
dissipated  hour,  with  their  night-keys  in  their  pock- 
ets. I  own  I  should  be  sorry  to  find  myself  mistaken. 
Soon  after  leaving  the  largest  dog-town,  we  turned 


166       THE  HEART  OF  THE  CONTINENT. 

considerably  to  the  westward,  getting  in  among  the 
mountain  foot-hills,  and  continuing  to  thread  them 
until  we  reached  Colorado  City. 

Before  we  finally  left  the  neighborhood  of  Monu- 
ment Creek,  I  stopped  the  ambulance,  and  ascended 
one  of  the  most  practicable  hills  among  the  number 
crowned  by  sculpturesque  formations.  The  hill  was 
a  mere  mass  of  sand  and  debris  from  decayed  rocks, 
about  a  hundred  feet  high,  conical,  and  bearing  on  its 
summit  an  irregular  group  of  pillars.  After  a  pro- 
tracted examination,  I  found  the  formation  to  consist 
of  a  peculiar  friable  conglomerate,  which  has  no  pre- 
cise parallel  in  any  of  our  Eastern  strata.  Some  of 
the  pillars  were  nearly  cylindrical ;  others  were  long 
cones ;  and  a  number  were  spindle-shaped,  or  like  a 
buoy  set  on  end.  With  hardly  an  exception,  they 
were  surmounted  by  capitals  of  remarkable  projec- 
tion beyond  their  base.  These  I  found  slightly 
different  in  composition  from  the  shafts.  The  con- 
glomerate of  the  latter  was  an  irregular  mixture  of 
fragments  from  all  the  hypogene  rocks  of  the  range, 
including  quartzose  pebbles,  pure  crystals  of  silex, 
various  crystalline  sandstones,  gneiss,  solitary  horn- 
blende and  feldspar,  nodular  iron-stones,  rude  agates, 
and  gun-flint ;  the  whole  loosely  cemented  in  a  ma- 
trix composed  of  clay,  lime  (most  likely  from  the 
decomposition  of  gypsum),  and  red  oxide  of  iron. 
The  disk  which  formed  the  largely  projecting  capi- 
seemed  to  represent  the  original  diameter  of  the 
pillar,  and  apparently  retained  its  proportions  in 
virtue  of  a  much  closer  texture  and  larger  per  cent, 
of  iron  in  its  composition.  These  were  often  so  ap- 
parent, that  the  pillars  had  a  contour  of  the  most 
rugged  description,  and  a  tinge  of  pale  cream-yellow, 


PIKE'S  PEAK   AND  THE   GAEDEN   OF  THE   GODS.'  167 

while  the  capitals  were  of  a  brick-dust  color,  with 
excess  of  red  oxide,  and  nearly  as  uniform  in  their 
granulation  as  fine  millstone-grit. 

The  shape  of  these  formations  seemed,  therefore,  to 
turn  on  the  comparative  resistance  to  atmospheric 
influences  possessed  by  their  various  parts.  Many 
other  indications,  together  with  such  reports  as  I 
could  get  from  old  settlers,  and  the  experience  of  so 
acute  a  student  as  Mr.  Pierce,  led  me  to  narrow  down 
all  the  hypothetical  agencies  which  might  have  pro- 
duced them,  to  a  single  one, — air,  in  its  chemical  or 
mechanical  operations,  and  usually  in  both.  Water 
cannot  be  conceived  of  for  an  instant  among  the  pro- 
ducing causes,  —  except  in  its  vaporous  dispersion 
through  the  atmosphere.  Rain  falls  too  seldom  here 
(never  in  some  localities  of  the  mountains  where 
these  structures  abound)  to  work  much  change  in 
even  the  most  friable  rocks ;  besides,  rain  is  a  lev- 
eler,  not  a  sculptor.  No  freshet  from  the  mountains 
has  topped  these  lofty  hills  since  the  creation  of  man- 
kind; nor  are  they  accessible  to  any  water-course. 
But  an  all-sufficient  denial  to  the  hypothesis  of  water 
is  the  shape  of  the  mimetic  structures  themselves. 
Water  in  motion  is  not  easily  deflected,  and  acts  like 
a  plane,  not  like  a  lathe.  These  skillfully  turned  cyl- 
inders, spindles,  and  cones  point  to  a  tool  far  more 
manageable,  more  readily  carried  around  curved  lines, 
and  more  minutely  delicate. 

This  tool,  in  Colorado  and  other  portions  of  the 
Rocky  Mountain  region,  is  none  other  than  air  or 
wind.  This  agent  has  never  thus  far  received  in  our 
geological  dynamics  the  importance  it  deserves.  The 
atmosphere  of  this  region  is  a  chemical  solvent,  as  en- 
ergetic in  some  directions  as  it  is  inert  in  others.  Its 


168      THE  HEART  OF  THE  CONTINENT. 

oxygen  is  in  a  comparatively  passive  state.  It  will 
not  rust  iron  exposed  to  it  for  years  at  a  time,  and 
the  progress  of  pulmonary  tubercle  is  often  arrested 
in  it  at  once.  But  over  wide  tracts  it  is  charged  with 
alkaline  vapor,  and,  in  virtue  of  that  characteristic, 
possesses  a  power  of  decomposing  the  combinations 
of  silex,  which  sometimes  on  our  journey  showed 
itself  in  ways  quite  surprising.  I  have  seen  large 
tracts  in  the  heart  of  the  range  covered  with  crags 
and  boulders  belonging  to  a  granite  originally  one  of 
the  most  uniform  and  cohesive  in  texture  among  all 
our  rocks,  out  of  whose  weather-worn  faces  the  feld- 
spar crystals  could  be  scraped  with  the  nail  as  easily 
as  one  would  pick  the  seeds  from  a  New  Year's  cake. 
Several  large  boulders  seemed  to  have  been  corroded 
through  and  through.  I  kicked  them  to  pieces  as 
easily  as  the  softest  conglomerate. 

The  detritus  resulting  from  such  chemical  decom- 
position has,  during  earlier  ages,  been  brought  down 
from  the  older  rocks  of  the  range  in  immense  quan- 
tities, by  the  action  of  ice  or  floods.  The  whole  region 
of  the  high  divides  we  had  been  travelling  from  Den- 
ver, was  thickly  strown  with  such  detritus ;  and  in 
some  cases,  like  the  conical  hills  beneath  the  monu- 
ments, the  ground  was  entirely  composed  of  it.  In 
its  earliest  stage,  it  was  probably  all  one  vast  rubble 
bed,  whose  surface  became  gradually  comminuted 
into  sand,  as  on  the  yucca  plains;  or  triturated  and 
weather-beaten  into  a  coherent  layer,  like  that  which 
forms  the  capitals  of  the  columns. 

The  chemical  energies  of  atmosphere  having  been 
exhausted  in  forming,  with  the  aid  of  water,  this 
superficially  compacted  drift-bed,  mechanical  causes 
began  to  operate,  in  the  form  of  wind.  Those  who 


PIKE'S  PEAK  AND   THE   GARDEN   OF  THE   GODS.     169 

think  such  an  agency  inadequate  to  the  large  and 
largely  varied  excavations  which  have  taken  place  in 
the  Colorado  drift-bed,  need  only  witness  a  whirlwind 
like  those  which  it  was  my  fortune  to  encounter  both 
along  the  Platte  and  in  the  mountains,  to  make  their 
minds  entirely  easy  on  the  subject.  There  is  no 
achievement  of  force  beyond  the  capability  of  a 
Rocky  Mountain  tornado.  It  would  take  too  long  to 
investigate  all  the  meteorological  conditions  which 
underlie  this  fact;  but  one  abundant  reason  exists 
in  the  contour  of  the  mountains,  and  their  relative 
position  with  the  Plains.  The  Plains,  over  their 
whole  sandy  surface,  compose  a  vast  radiator;  dis- 
charging immense  quantities  of  heat  into  the  atmos- 
phere during  the  entire  sunny  period  of  every  day. 

From  dawn  till  night-fall  the  superjacent  stratum 
of  air  undergoes  constant  rarefaction,  and,  as  it  as- 
cends to  meet  the  westerly  current,  is  progressively 
carried  into  the  higher  mountain  region  adjacent. 
Here  it  parts  with  a  portion  of  its  caloric,  but  is 
pressed  back  by  continuous  rarifications  from  below, 
until  with  darkness  the  process  stops,  at  a  state  of 
things  like  the  following :  an  immense  body  of  air 
condensed  among  the  mountains,  but  every  moment 
growing  colder  and  heavier,  a  comparative  vacuum 
existing  immediately  over  the  Plains  below.  The 
result  is  an  immediate  wind-cataract,  falling  from  the 
height  of  about  twenty  thousand  feet.  But  this  fall 
does  not  make  a  straight  plunge,  like  Niagara.  It 
descends  not  over  a  precipice,  but  through  a  chasm. 
One  characteristic  of  the  Rocky  Mountains  is  its 
system  of  vast  indentations,  cutting  through  from  the 
top  to  the  bottom  of  the  range.  Some  of  these  take 
the  form  of  funnels,  others  are  deep,  tortuous  galle- 


170       1HE  HEART  OF  THE  CONTINENT. 

ries,  known  as  passes  or  canons ;  but  all  have  their 
openings  toward  the  Plains.  The  descending  masses 
of  air  fall  into  these  funnels,  or  sinuous  canals,  as 
they  slide  down,  concentrating  themselves  and  ac- 
quiring a  vertical  motion.  By  the  time  they  issue 
from  the  mouth  of  the  gorge  at  the  base  of  the  range, 
they  are  gigantic  augers,  with  a  revolution  faster  than 
man's  cunningest  machinery,  and  a  cutting  edge  of 
silex,  obtained  from  the  first  sand-heap  caught  up 
by  their  fury.  Thus  armed  with  their  own  resistless 
motion,  and  an  incisive  thread  of  the  hardest  min- 
eral next  to  the  diamond,  they  sweep  on  over  the 
Plains,  to  excavate,  pull  down,  or  carve  into  new 
forms  whatever  friable  formation  lies  in  their  way. 
I  can  give  no  better  idea  of  the  efficiency  of  this 
instrument  than  by  citing  a  few  examples  from  ac- 
tual experience.  First,  as  to  carrying  capacity. 
That  portion  of  the  track  between  Denver  and  Pike's 
Peak  which  lies  across  the  open  Plains  is  every  year 
repeatedly  buried  out  of  sight  under  gravel  large 
enough  to  make  it  seem  macadamized,  blown  from 
the  foot-hills,  a  distance  of  several  miles,  by  the  or- 
dinary winds  of  the  region.  It  is  no  uncommon 
occurrence  to  see  large  trees  in  the  path  of  the  whirl- 
wind torn  up  by  the  roots,  and  carried,  revolving  as 
they  go,  a  distance  of  several  miles  into  the  Plains. 
Stones  of  many  pounds'  weight  are  sometimes  served 
in  the  same  way,  seeming  to  be  retained  in  the  ver- 
tical whirl  with  as  much  ease  as  a  cloud  of  dust  or  a 
splinter  of  wood. 

Second,  as  to  the  force  of  the  wind-auger.  I  my- 
self have  seen  a  hole  bored  into  a  Colorado  sand-blufij 
several  feet  deep,  and  of  sufficient  diameter  to  admit 
one's  arm,  by  a  small  spiral  current  which  rose  on  a 


PIKE'S  PEAK   AND  THE   GARDEN   OF  THE   GODS.    171 

comparatively  calm  day,  and  without  any  general  at- 
mospheric perturbation.  The  work  was  done  in  a 
few  seconds ;  and  no  machinery  could  have  accom- 
plished it  more  neatly.  Mr.  Pierce  informed  me  of 
much  larger  excavations  which  he  had  seen  effected 
with  equal  dispatch.  But  the  account  of  his  from 
which  I  gained  my  best  idea  of  the  exact  composition 
and  operation  of  the  wind-and-silex  auger,  was  to  the 
effect  that  on  a  certain  occasion,  when  he  was  stop- 
ping at  a  settler's  cabin  during  the  prevalence  of  one 
of  these  mountain  whirlwinds,  a  spiral  current,  laden 
with  sand-grains,  impinged  against  one  of  the  window- 
panes,  and,  after  a  few  moment's  revolution,  left  it  as 
perfect  a  piece  of  ground  glass  as  could  be  made  by  a 
manufacturer  of  lamp-shades. 

It  is  to  the  agency  of  this  wind-and-silex  auger 
that  I  ascribe  all  the  mimetic  formations  of  the  Colo- 
rado foot-hills.  Though  a  tool  of  tremendous  force, 
it  possesses  a  flexibility  which  enables  it  to  accept  any 
curved  path ;  and  this  is  an  essential  requisite  of  the 
instrument  which  can  create  such  sculptures.  It  is  a 
far  more  delicate  tool  than  running  water ;  for  it  acts 
by  mechanical  force  alone,  while  water  chemically 
decomposes  the  rocks  whose  surface  it  is  abrading, 
and  crumbles  them  to  pieces  while  it  is  channeling 
their  outsides.  I  consider  the  wind-and-silex  auger 
the  cleanest  tool  that  Nature  works  with.  It  corre- 
sponds to  man's  highest  advance  in  a  similar  direction, 
— the  lathe  for  turning  eccentric  surfaces.  The  work 
that  it  does,  no  other  agency  could  do  ;  and  we  are 
thus  indebted  for  one  of  the  most  characteristic 
features  of  our  contemporary  geology  to  a  force 
scarcely  noticed  in  its  dynamics. 

About  four  o'clock  in  the  afternoon  we  came  into  a 


172       THE  HEART  OF  THE  CONTINENT. 

narrow  valley  between  perpendicular  uplifts  of  red 
and  white  argillaceous  sandstone,  which  towered, 
bare  as  a  house-wall,  to  the  height  of  three  or  four 
hundred  feet.  The  effect  of  the  sunlight  on  these 
brightly  colored  precipices  was  splendid  in  the  ex- 
treme. They  guarded  the  sides  of  our  narrow  avenue 
for  a  distance  of  three  or  four  miles,  and  only  left  us 
at  the  edge  of  the  little  settlement  of  Colorado  City. 

We  drove  to  the  one  place  of  entertainment  which 
the  town  possessed, — a  small  wooden  structure,  whose 
title  of  the  El  Paso  House  was  an  indication  of  our 
approach  toward  Mexican  boundaries  and  Mexican 
manners.  The  latter  fact  was  abundantly  attested  by 
the  slovenliness  with  which  the  house  was  managed, 
the  discomfort  of  its  rooms,  and  the  melancholy  reck- 
lessness of  its  table. 

But  we  were  in  no  mood  to  grumble,  having  such 
food  for  the  eyes  and  head  as  dispensed  with  the  ne- 
cessity of  other  aliment.  The  dozen  buildings  of 
which  Colorado  City  is  composed,  lie  in  a  sand  plain 
at  the  base  of  the  footrhills  which  wait  upon  Pike's 
Peak.  The  grand  old  mountain  itself  projects  its 
head  of  glittering  snow,  through  a  gap  in  the  nearer 
ranges  which  surround  it,  to  a  height  and  loneliness 
which  almost  tire  imagination.  Its  altitude  is  very 
differently  estimated,  but  cannot  vary  much  from  six- 
teen thousand  feet.  The  best  view  of  it  is  not  from 
the  base  of  its  foot-hills  at  Colorado  City,  for  its  full 
proportions  are  veiled  at  that  point  by  intermediate 
ranges,  but  far  out  on  the  Plains,  east  of  the  town, 
where  for  more  than  a  hundred  miles  the  emigrant 
sees  it  standing,  a  solitary  beacon,  with  every  detail 
melted  into  one  heaven-piercing  cone.  How  promi- 
nent an  object  it  is,  may  be  inferred  from  the  fact 


PIKE'S  PEAK  AND  THE   GARDEN  OF  THE   GODS.    173 

that  it  gave  its  name  to  this  entire  region,  —  the  man 
who  came  to  the  Colorado  mines  being  a  "  Pike's- 
Peaker,"  though  his  nearest  lodes  were  situated  a 
hundred  miles  from  that  mountain  by  the  shortest 
access. 

A  mountain  which  I  admire  more  than  Pike's  Peak 
(or  at  least  the  Colorado  City  view  of  it),  is  the  grand 
Cheyenne,  which  rises  a  little  further  south,  and  is 
plainly  visible  at  the  rear  of  the  El  Paso  House,  from 
base  to  dome.  Its  height  is  several  thousand  feet  less 
than  Pike's ;  but  its  contour  is  so  noble  and  so  mas- 
sive that  this  disadvantage  is  overlooked.  There  is  a 
unity  of  conception  in  it  unsurpassed  in  any  moun- 
tain I  have  seen.  It  is  full  of  living  power.  In  the 
declining  daylight,  its  vast  simple  surface  became  the 
broadest  mass  of  blue  and  purple  shadow  that  ever 
lay  on  the  easel  of  Nature. 

Having  refreshed  ourselves  with  a  good  night's  rest, 
in  which  fatigue  met  fleas  and  came  off  conqueror, 
we  took  an  early  start  from  the  El  Paso,  to  examine 
the  natural  features  of  this  most  interesting  region. 

Our  first  visit  was  paid  to  a  shale-bed  on  the  Fon- 
taine qui  Bouille,  in  which  I  had  heard  through  Mr. 
Pierce  of  the  discovery  of  interesting  tertiary  re- 
mains. 

Mr.  Garvin,  a  man  of  varied  experience  as  sailor, 
hunter,  miner,  and  merchant,  who  had  finally  settled 
down  among  the  Eocky  Mountains,  and  was  conduct- 
ing a  Colorado  City  branch  of  George  Tappan's  house, 
accompanied  us  in  our  examination,  and  much  as- 
sisted us  by  his  knowledge  of  localities.  "We  were 
joined  by  another  gentleman  of  the  same  name,  but 
no  relationship  with  the  former,  (a  singular  coinci- 
dence in  so  small  a  directory!)  a  Dr.  Garvin,  whose 


174  THE  HEART   OF  THE   CONTINENT. 

practice  is  probably  more  extensive  than  any  physi- 
cian's in  the  world, — bounded  like  a  State,  by  the 
Arkansas  on  the  south,  the  Platte  on  the  north,  the 
Rocky  Mountains  on  the  west,  and  some  indefinite 
line  on  the  Plains  to  the  eastward.  This  is  a  case  in 
which  a  doctor  must  keep  his  horse.  How  many  calls 
can  be  accomplished  in  a  day  by  a  medical  man  who 
has  one  case  of  high  fever  on  the  top  of  the  snow- 
range,  and  a  low  typhoid  patient  on  the  Plains  of  the 
Arkansas,  may  be  imagined  by  merely  consulting  the 
atlas.  Still  another  gentleman  joined  our  explora- 
tions about  the  Fontaine  qui  Bouille — Mr.  Sheldon, 
a  resident  engineer  in  Mr.  Pierce's  department,  who 
shared  his  chief's  enthusiasm  for  science,  and  had  col- 
lected a  small  cabinet  embracing  some  very  valuable 
geological  specimens. 

The  Fontaine  qui  Bouille  (here  pronounced  "  Fon- 
ten  kee  Boo'yeh  ")  is  a  clear  and  rapid  stream,  about 
ten  yards  wide,  and  two  feet  deep,  issuing  from  a 
canon  near  the  true  base  of  Pike's  Peak,  and  skirting 
the  edge  of  the  Colorado  City  settlement,  with  a 
southeasterly  course  towards  the  Arkansas.  Half  a 
mile  below  the  El  Paso  House,  it  has  been  pressed 
into  the  service  of  a  grist-mill  by  a  rude  dam  of  stakes 
and  slabs.  The  little  pond  resulting  from  this  arrange- 
ment gave  us  a  nice  opportunity  to  bathe.  We  were 
not  slow  to  avail  ourselves  of  it,  and  found  the  nearly 
snow-cold  water  the  most  delightful  tonic  we  had  en- 
joyed since  our  parching  journey  across  the  Plains. 
Having  finished  our  bath  with  a  cold  shower  below 
the  dam,  we  dressed  ourselves,  and  proceeded  to 
work. 

The  mill,  possibly  owing  to  the  fact  that  Colorado 
as  yet  buys  most  of  her  flour  in  sacks  from  the  East, 


PIKE'S  PEAK  AND   THE  GARDEN   OF   THE   GODS.    175 

was  not  in  operation,  and  did  not  seem  to  have  been 
for  a  considerable  time  previous.  This  fact  facilitated 
our  investigations,  some  of  the  most  interesting  exca- 
vations being  in  the  bank  near  the  water-wheel,  and 
at  the  bottom  of  the  stream  beyond  the  sluice. 

The  bank  was  a  perpendicular  mass  of  shale  inter- 
spersed with  alluvial  soil  (the  former  predominating 
as  we  went  deeper),  about  fifteen  feet  high,  immedi- 
ately below  the  mill,  and  running  a  number  of  rods 
without  much  change  of  elevation.  Through  this  mass 
the  long  fibrous  roots  of  young  willow  and  cotton- 
wood  trees  growing  on  the  edge  of  the  bluff,  had  pen- 
etrated and  reticulated  in  all  directions.  The  shale 
itself  was  almost  purely  argillaceous,  and  broke  into 
cubes  or  scaled  into  laminae  with  equal  ease.  A  more 
friable  matrix,  one  apparently  less  favorable  for  the 
preservation  of  remains,  could  scarcely  be  imagined. 
Every  geologist  at  the  East  knows  in  what  low  esti- 
mation the  softer  shales  are  regarded  as  a  store-house 
for  fossils,  and  how  little  reasonable  hope  there  is  of 
finding  perfect  specimens  there,  especially  of  the 
more  delicate  sorts.  This  shale  was  a  more  unlikely 
looking  one  than  the  brittlest  of  our  Eastern  strata. 
Yet,  by  the  aid  of  a  common  jackknife,  a  hammer, 
and  a  shovel,  we  extracted  from  it  a  better  preserved 
and  more  interesting  collection  of  remains  than  I  ever 
got  from  an  equal  area  with  thrice  the  labor.  The 
great  bulk  of  them  belonged  to  a  single  species  of 
tertiary  oyster,  resembling  our  modern  mollusk  in 
shape,  but  larger  and  heavier,  with  a  beauty  of  color 
on  its  inner  surface  not  surpassed  by  the  mother-of- 
pearl  shells  which  adorn  East  Indian  cabinets.  I  was 
astonished  to  find  the  delicate  arragonite  lining  as  per- 
fectly preserved  and  freshly  iridescent  as  if  the  animal 


176  THE  HEART  OF  THE   CONTINENT. 

had  died  an  hour  before.  Not  until  the  shells  had 
been  exposed  to  the  air  for  several  hours  did  the  na- 
creous layer  begin  to  scale  off,  and  leave  the  coarser 
structure  bare.  Noticing  this  occur  in  some  of  the 
specimens,  I  gave  the  others  a  thin  coating  of  glue 
which  quite  successfully  arrested  their  further  deteri- 
oration. 

Patient  digging  in  the  shales  was  also  rewarded  by 
some  fragments  of  an  equally  well  kept  ammonite. 
Though  we  succeeded  in  getting  out  no  single  perfect 
specimen,  the  remains  were  sufficiently  complete  to 
be  characterized  as  Ammonites  Jason.  In  Mr.  Sheldon's 
collection  we  found  several  specimens  of  this  mollusk 
much  larger  and  handsomer,  one  nearly  entire,  ob- 
tained near  the  place  where  we  were  working.  But 
the  most  interesting  remains  of  this  shale  are  the 
baculites.  Several  found  here  have  measured  eigh- 
teen inches  in  length,  and  exhibit  a  clearness  in  their 
curious  markings,  points,  and  iridescence  so  startling 
that  one  can  hardly  credit  them  to  an  obsolete  period, 
and  might  almost  be  led  into  hunting  the  bed  of  the 
creek  for  contemporary  specimens.  On  our  return 
from  the  creek,  we  availed  ourselves  of  the  kindly 
proffered  house  where  Mr.  Garvin  was  keeping  his 
bachelor  menage  entirely  alone,  and  passed  a  couple 
of  hours  in  sorting,  varnishing,  labeling,  and  pack- 
ing the  results  of  our  investigation  among  both  the 
conglomerates  and  agates  of  our  past  two  days,  and 
the  shales  of  the  Fontaine  qui  Bouille. 

On  the  following  day,  the  same  party  went  two 
miles  and  a  half  up  the  Fontaine  qui  Bouille  to  visit 
the  springs  which  gave  it  its  name.  The  road  along 
the  bank  of  the  stream  from  Colorado  City  is  a  pure 
impromptu  affair  to  every  fresh  comer;  but  by  skillful 


PIKE'S  PEAK   AND  THE   GAKDEN  OF  THE   aODS.     177 

driving,  we  managed  to  steer  between  boulders,  and 
get  the  ambulance  into  the  neighborhood  of  the 
springs,  accompanied  by  several  gentlemen  on  horse- 
back. 

The  springs  no  doubt  originally  bubbled  up  from 
the  bed  of  the  river,  but  immense  depositions  of 
Glauber's-salts,  or  sulphates  of  lime  and  soda,  have 
raised  the  principal  fountains  ten  feet  above  the  creek 
level,  and  they  now  rise  in  basins  at  the  top  of  im- 
mense masses  of  this  incrustation,  standing  perpen- 
dicularly out  of  the  stream. 

The  Glauber 's-salt  taste  of  the  waters  is  agreeably 
modified  by  a  stream  of  carbonic  acid,  which  jets  up 
through  the  middle  of  the  basin,  keeping  them  con- 
stantly in  a  state  of  violent  ebullition  to  the  height 
of  two  or  three  inches.  There  are  two  of  the  main 
springs  on  the  south  side,  and  one  on  the  north  of  the 
stream.  The  last  is  the  most  pungent.  There  are 
also  along  the  base  of  the  south  bank,  higher  up,  a 
number  of  small  and  comparatively  quiet  springs,  one 
of  which  is  an  inky  chalybeate,  and  the  other  a  white 
sulphur.  The  alkali  of  the  larger  springs  is  evidently 
undersaturated  with  acid.  We  made  as  good  lemon- 
soda  water  as  I  ever  tasted,  by  filling  in  the  liveliest 
part  of  the  main  spring,  and  corking  up  instantly  a 
bottle,  which  we  had  previously  charged  with  half  a 
pint  of  lemon  syrup  and  half  a  table-spoonful  of  tar- 
taric  acid.  The  water  which  we  bottled  without  any 
mixture,  and  took  back  to  the  El  Paso  with  us  by 
way  of  experiment,  resembled  Congress  water  when 
opened  an  hour  or  two  after,  though  lacking  the  sa- 
line flavor.  The  northern  and  more  pungent  spring 
somewhat  reminded  me  of  Vichy,  and  the  chalybeate 
was  rather  like  Pynnont. 
12 


178     .  THE  HEART  OF  THE  CONTINENT. 

These  springs  are  very  highly  estimated  among  the 
settlers  of  this  region  for  their  virtues  in  the  cure  of 
rheumatism,  all  cutaneous  diseases,  and  the  special 
class  for  which  the  practitioner's  sole  dependence  has 
hitherto  been  mercury.  When  Colorado  becomes  a 
populous  State,  the  springs  of  the  Fontaine  qui 
Bouille  will  constitute  its  spa.  In  air  and  scenery 
no  more  glorious  summer  residence  could  be  imag- 
ined. The  Coloradian  of  the  future,  astonishing  the 
echoes  of  the  Rocky  foot-hills  by  a  railroad  from  Den- 
ver to  the  Springs,  and  running  down  on  Saturday  to 
stop  over  Sunday  with  his  family,  will  have  little 
cause  to  envy  us  Easterners  our  Saratoga  as  he  paces 
up  and  down  the  piazza  of  the  Spa  Hotel,  mingling 
his  full-flavored  Havana  with  that  lovely  air,  quite 
unbreathed  before,  which  is  floating  down  upon  him 
from  the  snow-peaks  of  the  range. 

Leaving  the  springs  of  the  Fontaine  qui  Bouille, 
we  rode  to  a  spot  about  two  miles  northward  of  Col- 
orado City,  which  is  called  "  The  Garden  of  the  Gods." 
This  fanciful  name  is  due  to  the  curious  forms  as- 
sumed by  red  and  white  sedimentary  strata  which 
have  been  upheaved  to  a  perfect  perpendicular  on  a 
narrow  plain  at  the  base  of  the  foot-hills,  with  sum- 
mits worn  by  the  action  of  wind  and  weather  into 
their  present  statuesque  appearance.  There  is  not 
much  garden  to  justify  the  title  ;  but  it  would  not  be 
difficult  to  imagine  some  of  the  curious  rock-masses 
petrified  gods  of  the  old  Scandinavian  mythology. 
These  masses,  upon  their  east  and  west  faces,  are 
nearly  tabular.  Some  of  them  reach  a  height  of 
four  hundred  feet,  with  the  proportions  of  a  flat 
grave-stone.  Two  of  the  loftier  ones  make  a  fine 
portal  to  tlie  gatewav  of  the  garden.  Their  red  is 


PIKE'S  PEAK  AND   THE  GARDEN   OF   THE   GODS.     179 

intenser  than  that  of  any  of  the  sandstones  I  am  ac- 
quainted with,  in  a  bright  sun  seeming  almost  like 
carnelian.  A  rock  of  similar  look  and  type  which  I 
have  omitted  to  mention  on  the  way  from  Denver, 
was  at  least  four  miles  away,  yet  made  as  clear  and 
conspicuous  a  blot  of  red  against  the  mountain-side 
as  if  it  had  been  laid  on  with  a  heavily  charged 
paint-brush.  This,  from  some  fancied  resemblance, 
was  called  "Church"  or  "Brick  Church"  Eock. 

These  "  gods  "  rise  abruptly  out  of  perfectly  level 
ground.  The  right  hand  or  northern  warder  of  the 
gateway  is  more  wedge-shaped  than  tabular,  and  con- 
tains within  it  a  cavern,  which  we  penetrated  with 
some  difficulty  by  a  small  aperture  opening  near  the 
base  of  the  western  side.  Twelve  feet  of  prostrate 
squeezing  brought  us  into  a  vault  about  fifty  feet 
long,  ten  feet  high,  and  a  dozen  wide.  We  lighted 
our  candles,  but  there  was  not  much  to  see.  The 
walls  of  the  hollow  were  damp ;  but  there  was  no 
dripping  water,  and  of  course,  in  a  gritty  rock  like 
this,  there  were  no  stalactites  or  secondary  forma- 
tions of  any  kind.  One  of  the  other  red  rocks 
resembles  a  statue  of  Liberty  standing  by  her  es- 
cutcheon, with  the  usual  Phrygian  cap  on  her  head. 
Still  another  is  surmounted  by  two  figures  which 
it  requires  very  little  poetry,  at  the  proper  distance 
from  them,  to  imagine  a  dolphin  and  an  eagle  as- 
pecting  each  other  across  a  field  gules.  The  spine- 
cracking  curve  of  the  dolphin,  and  his  nice,  impossibly 
fluted  mouth  would  have  delighted  any  of  the  old 
bronze-workers.  Quentin  Matsys  would  have  used 
him  for  a  model  in  some  civic  fountain.  The  eagle, 
too,  was  quite  striking.  Together,  we  regarded  these 
animals  as  the  emblems  of  our  national  supremacy 


180       THE  HEART  OF  THE  CONTINENT. 

over  field  and  flood,  and  named  them  The  American 
Arms.  Another  rock  resembles  a  pilgrim  (poetical, 
not  Plains'  variety)  pressing  forward  with  a  staff  in 
his  hand ;  another  is  supposed  to  look  exactly  like  a 
griffin.  Indeed,  from  the  right  point  of  view  one  feels 
that  a  griffin  must  very  probably  look  thus,  though 
the  difficulty  of  comparing  it  with  an  original  speci- 
men prevents  absolute  certainty. 

It  was  a  great  disappointment  to  some  of  our  kind 
friends  that  our  artist  did  not  choose  the  Garden  of 
the  Gods  for  a  "big  picture."  It  was  such  an  in- 
teresting place  in  nature  that  they  could  not  under- 
stand its  unavailability  for  art.  Everywhere  we  went 
during  our  journey,  we  found  the  same  ideas  prevail- 
ing, and  had  to  be  on  our  guard  against  enthusiasms, 
lest  we  should  waste  time  in  getting  at  the  "  most 
magnificent  scenery  in  the  world "  to  find  some 
solitary  castle-rock  or  weird  simulation  of  another 
kind,  which,  however  impressive  it  might  be  out- 
doors, was  absolutely  incommunicable  by  paint  and 
canvas,  when  the  attempt  to  convey  it,  being  simply 
the  imitation  of  an  imitation,  must  have  looked  either 
like  a  very  poor  castle,  or  a  mountain  put  up  by  an 
association  of  stone-masons.  But  the  artist's  selective 
faculty  is  not  to  be  looked  for  among  practical  men. 

The  morning  after  our  visit  to  the  god-patch,  we 
bade  good-by  to  our  friends  at  Colorado  City,  and 
once  more  turned  our  ambulance,  now  considerably 
heavier  by  a  rich  collection  of  specimens,  in  the  di- 
rection of  Denver.  Instead  of  keeping  near  the 
outer  edge  of  that  field  of  giant  grave-stones  be- 
tween which  we  had  picked  our  avenue  on  the  way 
down,  we  followed  the  Fontaine  qui  Bouille  up  to  its 
effervescent  springs,  took  a  last  deep  draught  of  the 


PIKE'S  PEAK  AND  THE   GARDEN  OF  THE   GODS.     181 

champagne  which  Nature  keeps  there  endlessly  on 
tap,  and,  steering  inward,  passed  the  gods  in  final, 
quick  review. 

Just  as  we  got  to  the  gateway  of  the  Garden  of 
the  Gods,  one  of  our  ambulance  horses  broke  his 
whiffletree  by  a  sudden  start.  His  excuse  was  an 
alarm  from  a  gun  fired  by  a  gentleman  of  our  party 
at  one  of  the  numerous  hares  which  we  encountered 
in  the  furze  about  the  Garden.  He  and  the  gentle- 
man magnanimously  divided  the  inconvenience  of  the 
accident ;  the  one  riding  and  the  other  letting  himself 
be  ridden  down  to  Colorado  City  for  a  new  spar. 

We  were  not  sorry  for  an  excuse  to  linger  beyond 
our  intention  in  one  of  the  most  interesting  spots  of 
the  Continent.  In  politeness  to  us,  that  portion  of 
the  expedition  represented  by  the  buck-board  also 
halted.  Pierce  geologized,  and  the  artist  sketched. 
Judge  Hall  found  sufficient  employment  in  the  mere 
act  of  admiration ;  expressing  himself  with  an  en- 
thusiasm in  regard  to  the  gods,  which  assured  me 
that  they  were  gods  indeed,  being  no  respecters  of 
persons, — else  had  they  risen  and  bowed  to  the  Chief 
Justice  of  the  Territory.  The  other  member  of  our 
party  went  hare-hunting  with  good  success,  using  the 
gun  which  the  gentleman  in  search  of  the  whiifle- 
tree  had  left  behind  him,  —  a  state  of  things  which 
has  its  high  moral  illustration  in  the  history  of  vir- 
tue from  Hogarth  down  to  the  last  Sunday-school 
book,  or  herein,  where  the  bad  little  boy,  who  fires 
in  an  original  style  out  of  the  coach,  has  to  go  away 
from  the  hares,  and  get  a  whiffletree,  while  the  good 
little  boy,  who  was  careful  not  to  fire  till  he  could  do 
it  under  the  most  proper  circumstances,  stays  behind, 
and  shoots  a  great  many  hares  with  the  bad  little 


182  THE  HEART  OF  THE  CONTINENT. 

boy's  gun.  We  remarked  to  our  bad  little  boy,  on  his 
return,  that  we  regarded  him  as  a  lofty  moral  lesson. 
It  was  a  very  hot  day  to  ride  five  miles  in  the  open, 
on  a  hard  trotting  horse  and  bare-back ;  so  that  he 
did  not  wish  to  be  a  lofty  moral  lesson,  and  expressed 
that  view  strongly. 

As  for  myself  during  his  absence,  I  gave  over  all 
'  thought  of  business,  and  wandered  around  in  a  much 
more  aesthetic  atmosphere  than  yesterday.  I  visited 
the  gypsum  hill  near  by,  and,  instead  of  asking  it  ques- 
tions, let  it  talk  to  me.  The  intense  glow  of  to-day's 
sun  made  it  more  lustrous  than  I  had  seen  it  before ; 
or  else  it  may  have  been  that  my  eyes  were  no  lon- 
ger occupied  with  minutiae  of  structure,  and  gave 
themselves  up  to  its  entire  impression.  It  was  a 
beautiful  object  in  the  landscape ;  such  an  exquisite 
pure  white,  with  such  a  fleecy  look  from  the  softening 
influence  of  the  debris  scattered  over  its  crystals, 
that  a  poet  would  have  called  it  one  of  the  gods' 
sheep  who  had  lain  down  in  the  garden  when  the 
doom  came,  and  suffered  petrifaction  with  his  masters. 
I  interested  myself  in  the  attempts  which  here  and 
there  were  making  by  inhabitants  of  Colorado  City 
to  turn  the  level  bottom  below  the  Garden  into  a 
valuable  tract  for  agricultural  purposes.  It  requires 
little  expense  of  time  or  labor  to  secure  a  foothold  on 
Uncle  Sam's  soil  in  this  Territory.  Four  notched  logs 
laid  in  a  square  on  the  ground,  will  keep  a  preempted 
quarter-section  for  a  year,  being  to  all  legal  intents, 
as  has  been  decided,  sufficient  earnest  of  the  fact  that 
the  owner  purposes  building  "  a  house  suitable  for 
human  habitation."  During  our  present  trip  we  saw 
several  such  squares  of  logs;  and  they  were  quite  as 
well  respected  by  new-comers  as  if  they  had  been 


PIKE'S  PEAK  AND  THE   GARDEN  OF  THE  GODS.    183 

squares  of  infantry.  At  one  time  Mr.  Garvin  had 
set  his  stake  in  the  Garden  of  the  Gods,  intending  to 
enjoy  the  luxury  of  ownership  in  that  great  natural 
curiosity ;  but  other  business  prevented  his  carrying 
out  his  plan  of  a  large  house  there,  and,  not  to  inter- 
fere with  actual  settlers  who  might  wish  the  spot,  he 
finally  withdrew  his  claim.  George  Tappan,  some 
time  before  I  came  to  Denver,  preempted  the  section 
containing  the  springs  of  the  Fontaine  qui  Bouille. 
But  Nature  is  not  quite  as  easy  with  the  new  settler 
as  Uncle  Sam.  If  she  is  to  yield  him  anything,  she 
demands  pay  beforehand.  He  can't  put  in  his  seeds, 
and  give  her  a  due-bill  on  Heaven  to  be  presently 
paid  in  showers ;  but  he  must  advance  her  moisture 
in  the  shape  of  irrigation,  prior  to  all  possibility  of 
her  growing  a  valuable  crop.  Through  the  low 
bottom  immediately  east  of  the  Gods'  Garden,  I 
found  a  number  of  "  sequis,"  or  distributing  ditches, 
already  run,  connecting  with  a  small  rivulet  which 
came  from  Camp  Creek  Canon,  and  fell  lower  down 
into  the  Fontaine  qui  Bouille.  Along  these  grew  a 
profusion  of  the  willow-leaved  cotton-wood,  a  tree  so 
much  resembling  the  common  swamp  willow  of  our 
Eastern  States,  that  but  for  the  character  of  the  bark 
I  should  have  taken  it  for  an  old  friend.  The  cotton- 
wood  with  the  cordiform  leaf  abounds  around  Den- 
ver, but  is  comparatively  scarce  here.  Wandering 
through  the  thicket,  I  collected  several  of  the  largest 
and  most  gorgeous  butterflies  found  out  of  California, 
.and  had  my  first  open-air  interview  with  a  Colorado 
rattlesnake.  He  was  so  near  me,  as  I  stooped  to  put 
my  hat  over  a  giant  papilio  sucking  from  the  mud  of 
the  stream,  that  if  he  had  not  been  a  noble  enemy, 
he  could  have  killed  me  more  easily  than  I  caught  the 


184      THE  HEART  OF  THE  CONTINENT. 

insect.  But  he  lifted  his  head  out  of  his  coil,  rattled 
vigorously,  and  as  I  leaped  back  to  break  off  a  sapling 
for  his  benefit,  slipped  quietly  out  of  sight  into  an 
overgrown  "sequi."  He  was  five  feet  in  length;  and 
though,  as  may  well  be  supposed  under  the  circum- 
stances, I  did  not  undertake  to  count  his  rattles, 
he  had  every  look  of  a  veteran.  But  fof  his  noise, 
the  ordinary  observer,  familiar  with  our  Eastern  and 
Southern  snake,  would  not  have  taken*  him  for  a  cro- 
talus  at  all,  the  brown  of  his  clouds  being  so  much 
duller,  and  shading  into  ashen  gray  without  the  least 
yellow  tinge  in  it.  Besides,  his  length  is  never  as 
great  as  that  attained  by  our  varieties,  four  and  five 
feet  being  his  average,  and  six  feet  a  somewhat  un- 
usual measure.  He  is  none  the  pleasanter  pet  for 
these  differences.  His  poison  is  quite  as  deadly  as 
his  Eastern  cousin's,  though  I  must  do  him  the  justice 
to  say  that  he  is  not  such  a  bore,  and  keeps  himself 
much  further  from  the  sight  of  civilization.  In  all 
our  wanderings  through  the  wildest  parts  of  the  Con- 
tinent, I  only  saw  one  other  living  rattlesnake  in  the 
open  air,  and  perhaps  half  a  dozen  that  had  been 
killed,  and  were  lying  in  our  track.  The  creatures 
showed  every  anxiety  to  get  out  of  man's  way,  and, 
it  is  to  be  hoped,  will  never  learn  the  habits  of  their 
Virginia  congeners,  who  make  a  rendezvous  of  the 
rock  foundation  under  a  house,  and  a  profession,  on 
sunny  days,  of  biting  the  children.  One  of  our  party, 
in  an  expedition  to  the  mountains,  had  one  of  his 
ambulance  mules  bitten  on  the  nose  while  feeding  on 
a  green  bottom  among  the  Wind  Kiver  peaks.  Every- 
body counseled  him  to  shoot  the  beast,  insisting  that 
he  could  not  save  him.  But  he  liked  the  mule,  as 
possessing  a  somewhat  sweeter  temper  and  happier 


PIKE'S  PEAK  AND  THE  GARDEN   OF  THE   GODS.    185 

view  of  life  than  are  usually  enjoyed  by  his  tribe,  so 
he  determined  to  cure  him.  In  the  first  place,  he  tied 
a  small  package  of  gunpowder  across  the  wound  on 
the  nose,  bandaged  the  mule's  eyes,  and  exploded  the 
charge.  Following  this  novel  method  of  actual  cau- 
tery, he  bound  upon  the  spot  a  paper  of  moistened 
fine-cut  tobacco.  Then,  with  the  assistance  of  his 
men,  he  held  the  mule's  mouth  open,  and  poured  an 
entire  bottle  of  raw  Bourbon  whiskey  down  his  throat. 
After  that — he  did  nothing  more.  The  mule  lived  to 
thank  him,  and  pay  his  bill  for  medical  services,  by 
drawing  him  home  to  the  white  settlements ;  but  I 
suspect  that  there  were  moments  during  the  prog- 
ress of  the  cure  when  Mr.  Mule  wondered  seriously 
whether  it  was  worth  while.  (In  saying  Mr.  Mule, 
I  do  not  intend  to  be  eccentric;  but  really,  over  this 
entire  region,  that  term  of  respect  is  so  habitually 
applied  to  animals  as  to  lose  the  slightest  semblance 
of  badinage.  The  old  hunter  says,  "I  up  with  my 
rifle,  and  down  goes  Mr.  Antelope ; "  or,  "  Mr.  Bear 
sat  up,  and  took  one  of  my  dogs  right  across  the 
scalp ;"  or,  "  Mr.  Indian  lay  in  the  bushes  waiting  for 
the  train.''  It  is  a  title  given  to  anything  that  has 
made  the  settler  trouble,  or  in  any  way  measured 
forces  with  him;  given  half  in  mockery  of  a  con- 
quered foe,  but  mostly,  I  suspect,  with  an  instinctive 
veneration  for  the  force  of  character  which  has  made 
the  victory  costly.  What  did  Mister  originally  mean 
but  master  ?  I  am,  however,  getting  too  philological 
even  for  a  parenthesis.) 

We  had  been  employed  at  the  Garden  of  the  Gods 
in  our  various  fashions  for  a  little  over  two  hours, 
when  our  ambassador  returned  with  a  whiffletree.  It 
was  manufactured  out  of  an  old  awning-post  belong- 


186       THE  HEART  OF  THE  CONTINENT. 

ing  to  some  discarded  emigrant  wagon,  and  had  sev- 
eral holes  in  it,  where  the  curtain-buttons  had  been 
screwed  in.  But  it  was  neatly  made,  and  the  only  thing 
we  could  get.  The  blacksmith  of  the  settlement,  who 
was  also  its  wheelwright  and  general  mechanic,  had 
made  a  tour  among  all  the  ruins  of  his  shop  before 
he  could  find  a  piece  of  timber  suitable  for  our  pur- 
pose. It  is  a  curious  fact  that  no  hard  wood  like  our 
nut-trees,  ash,  and  white-oak,  is  to  be  found  among 
the  native  growths  of  Colorado.  There  is  plenty  of 
pine  and  cedar  timber  in  the  high  mountain  gorges, 
some  spruce  and  fir ;  but  all  the  work  which  has  to 
endure  strain,  must  be  made  from  imported  woods. 
It  is  not  long  since  young  hickory,  not  particularly 
well  seasoned,  sold  as  high  as  forty  cents  a  pound  in 
this  region.  An  old  pair  of  ash  thills  will  often  bring 
more  money,  for  purposes  of  cutting  up  and  making 
over,  than  an  entirely  new  pair,  of  the  best  workman- 
ship, would  cost  in  New  York.  There  seems  to  be  a 
fine  field  open  to  any  man  who  can  resist  the  temp- 
tation of  immediate  and  perhaps  munificent  returns 
offered  by  speculation  and  the  mines,  long  enough  to 
try  the  acclimatization  of  the  hard  woods  in  Colorado. 
There  is  but  little  doubt  that  a  nursery  of  hickories, 
English  walnuts,  white-ashes,  and  oaks,  would  flourish 
almost  anywhere  between  Denver  and  Latham,  along 
the  banks  of  the  Platte.  It  certainly  would  take  but 
little  time  and  energy  to  commence  the  experiment, 
by  planting  the  nuts,  seeds,  or  acorns.  No  enterprise 
takes  better  care  of  itself  from  the  first  start ;  and  if 
it  succeeded,  the  proprietor  would  have  the  satisfac- 
tion of  a  fine  source  of  revenue  yearly,  doubling  its 
value  before  his  eyes,  with  the  certainty  that  in  twenty 
years  he  might  command  the  entire  markets  of  Den- 


PIKE'S  PEAK   AND  THE   GARDEN  OF  THE   GODS.     187 

ver,  Central,  and  Colorado  cities,  in  virtue  of  the 
mere  fact  that  he  was  first  in  the  field.  Vast  quan- 
tities of  hard  wood  are  needed  in  Denver  and  the 
mines;  yet  the  impossibility  of  getting  it  close  at 
hand  is  so  great  that  I  have  seen  men  come  into 
George  Tappan's  store,  buy  half  a  dozen  imported 
rakes,  and  break  off  the  teeth  and  bows  to  make  fish- 
poles  of  the  handles.  Nothing  else  sufficiently  strong, 
light,  and  pliant  was  to  be  had  for  love  or  money. 
Every  train  of  Tappan's,  Byram's,  or  the  other  mer- 
chants running  wagons  from  the  Missouri,  brings  out 
a  cargo  of  the  hard  woods;  but  these  necessarily 
command  prices  which  must  long  ago  have  stimu- 
lated Coloradian  enterprise  into  attempting  tree  cul- 
ture for  itself,  had  not  the  one  idea  of  mining  hith- 
erto absorbed  every  faculty  of  the  people.  This  mat- 
ter must  and  will  right  itself  in  time.  At  least,  I 
hope  so ;  for  certainty  is  not  quite  possible  to  one  who 
has  seen  the  same  destitution  prevailing  in  parts  of 
Oregon  which  have  been  much  longer  settled,  have 
no  excuse  in  the  importunity  of  mining,  and  very  lit- 
tle help  to  their  condition  from  anything  like  a  well 
perfected  system  of  imports. 

What  I  have  said  touching  this  matter  may  seem 
too  large  an  excursion  from  the  recital  of  our  trip; 
but  it  is  my  object,  so  far  as  possible,  to  take  the 
reader  along  with  me,  let  him  see  what  I  saw  as  it 
occurred,  and  have  him  share  the  suggestions  awak- 
ened within  me  as  they  arose  on  the  spot.  We  shall 
thus  be  in  less  danger  of  overlooking  many  appar- 
ently trifling  but  still  important  traits  of  the  country 
and  people  we  travel  through,  which  by  their  minute- 
ness might  slip  the  grasp  of  a  more  orderly  and  am- 
bitious classification. 


188       THE  HEART  OF  THE  CONTINENT. 

On  the  whiffle  tree  having  been  adjusted,  we  re- 
sumed our  line  of  march,  turning,  in  about  five  miles 
from  Colorado  City,  between  shaggy  precipices  and 
thickets  of  low  evergreen,  to  the  canon  of  Camp  Creek. 
The  character  of  the  uplifts  in  the  mouth  of  this 
canon  is  even  bolder  than  at  the  Garden  of  the  Gods. 
The  most .  remarkable  columnar  structure  that  I  saw 
in  our  whole  journey  exists  here,  in  an  obelisk  of  the 
same  brilliant  natural  brick  which  forms  the  material 
of  the  Gods,  rising  quite  unsupported  to  the  height 
of  about  four  hundred  feet,  with  a  curious  swell  at 
its  summit  which  much  exceeds  in  circumference  the 
lower  portion  of  the  shaft,  and  gives  the  whole  struc- 
ture a  look  of  self-poise  and  strong  insecurity  in  the 
face  of  natural  laws,  not  excelled  by  the  Leaning 
Tower  of  Pisa.  I  was  compelled  to  sketch  it  for  my- 
self, there  being  so  much  more  artistic  work  at  hand 
for  the  artist's  pencil;  but  I  could  not  give  with  my 
blaqk  lines  an  idea  of  the  color,  however  truthful  the 
drawing  in  figure.  How  much  is  lost  by  the  absence 
of  color,  may  be  conceived  by  imagining  a  shaft 
higher  than  the  loftiest  steeple  of  our  metropolitan 
churches,  red  as  blood  from  foot  to  capital,  and  re- 
lieved against  dense  green  rock-pines,  bare  brown 
mountains,  shining  uplifts  of  the  white  variety,  or 
the  intense  blue  sky  of  a  Colorado  summer. 

Behind  the  obelisk  to  the  west,  the  canon  entered 
the  mountains  between  heightening  walls  of  an  unri- 
valed savage  beauty,  its  last  glimpse  being  a  lofty 
gap  with  serrated  edges  like  a  giant's  staircase, 
formed  by  the  great  mass  of  schistose  sandstone 
broken  into  square  blocks.  Neither  in  pictures  nor 
landscape  do  I  remember  a  more  exquisite  gradation 
between  foreground  and  sky  than  that  which  led  my 


PIKE'S  PEAK  AND  THE  GARDEN  OF  THE  GODS.    189 

eye  from  the  tall  red  obelisk  to  the  glimpse  at  the 
top  of  the  canon. 

Nothing  occurred  on  the  return  to  Sprague's — our 
half-way  house  both  going  and  coming — more  impor- 
tant than  the  shooting  of  a  fine  sickle-bill  curlew, 
which  was  floating  over  the  long  sandy  dog-plain  I 
have  before  noticed.  The  last  place  where  I  had  held 
a  curlew  in  my  hands  was  far  up  the  St.  John's  River, 
among  the  tangled  yellow  jasmines  and  convolvuli 
that  border  Floridian  lagoons ;  and  it  was  a  singular 
sensation  to  see  this  bird  so  far  away  from  all  his  (to 
me)  familiar  haunts.  But  the  curlew  is  considerable 
of  a  cosmopolitan.  In  regard  to  this  bird  we  were 
compelled  to  acknowledge  a  fact  that  often  forced 
itself  upon  us  afterwards.  There  is  no  use  in  attempt- 
ing to  collect  such  specimens,  unless  one  goes  spe- 
cially provided  for  the  purpose.  You  cannot  satisfy 
yourself  on  the  vast  field  between  the  Missouri  and  the 
Pacific  by  naturalizing  merely  en  amateur.  You  must 
set  out  with  something  more  than  an  empty  box  and 
a  piece  of  arsenical  soap.  The  climate,  being  anti- 
septic, is  in  your  favor ;  but  all  else  is  against  you. 
You  have  no  adequate  means  of  packing  your  skins, 
and  keeping  them  from  vermin;  none  for  transport- 
ing them  safely,  on  the  wild  routes  which  we  trav- 
elled, and  in  the  way  we  were  compelled  to  travel 
them.  Mineral  specimens  are  all  that  the  amateur 
can  be  sure  of  getting  home  to  the  States  in  good 
order.  This  vast  field  of  the  Central  Continent  must 
be  beaten  by  specialists,  each  provided  with  his  own 
definite  plan,  tools,  and  means  of  carriage.  At  the 
best,  he  will  have  to  sacrifice  much  that  it  is  a  real 
pain  not  to  carry  away;  for  his  collections  accumulate 
faster  than  he  will  ever  be  able  to  forward  them  to 


190       THE  HEART  OF  THE  CONTINENT. 

the  settlements  till  the  Pacific  Kailroad  has  opened  its 
great  artery  from  Pike's  Peak  to  the  sea.  So,  despite 
our  arsenical  soap,  this  fine  curlew  eventually  be- 
came so  much  deteriorated  that  we  had  regretfully 
to  throw  him  away. 

I  will  not  stale  these  pages  by  a  review  of  the 
route  between  Sprague's  and  Denver.  We  took  din- 
ner at  the  Pretty  Woman's  Eanch,  and  came  down 
the  slope  of  the  Cherry  and  Plum  Creek  Divide  just 
after  sunset,  getting  in  twilight  a  magnificent  view 
of  fires  which  were  devastating  the  dense  fir  and 
pine  growths  of  the  mountain  gorges  behind  Denver. 
The  smoke  and  heated  air  from  the  vast  chimney- 
draughts  of  the  canons  were  wafted  full  in  our  faces ; 
and  the  leaping  sheets  of  flame,  or  their  flickering 
fringe  along  the  forest  top,  almost  crackled  in  our 
ears,  and  added  to  the  evanescent  orange  of  sundown 
a  bloodier,  baleful  red. 

It  was  about  nine  o'clock  in  the  evening,  when, 
after  a  ride  through  a  perfect  Shaker  meeting  of 
jumping  hares,  we  got  over  the  broad  plain  between 
the  divide  and  Jim  Beckwith's  station,  skirted  the 
silent  Platte  lying  steel-gray  in  twilight  shadow, 
whirled  past  Camp  Weld,  and  came  into  Denver. 


CHAPTER  V. 

INTO  THE  ROCKY  MOUNTAINS. 

THE  day  before  our  party  left  Denver  finally,  was 
passed  by  myself  in  visiting,  under  Mr.  Pierce's  guid- 
ance, one  of  the  principal  coal  outcrops  thus  far  dis- 
covered in  the  Territory. 

For  a  wonder,  our  dust  was  laid  by  a  fine  drizzling 
rain,  which  lasted  the  entire  day.  The  ranchman  at 
whose  house  we  stopped  to  dine,  was  quite  delighted 
by  it.  It  was  doubtless  a  godsend  to  his  crops ;  but, 
aesthetically  speaking,  Colorado  does  not  look  well  in 
a  shower.  The  Plains  seem  surprised  by  it.  There 
is  none  of  that  bright,  thankful  receptivity  in  them 
which  rain  meets  from  every  grassy  stretch  in  the 
East.  There  is  no  hope  of  their  laughing  back  at 
bounty  in  a  gayer  green, — a  green  like  our  meadows, 
growing  greener  even  while  you  look  at  it,  and  the 
rain  still  falls. 

In  spite  of  the  drizzle,  our  blankets  and  water- 
proofs kept  us  perfectly  comfortable  on  Mr.  Pierce's 
buck-board.  Sixteen  miles  of  tolerably  smooth  driv- 
ing, picked  out  by  ourselves  among  the  undulations 
of  the  Plain  north  of  Denver,  brought  us  to  what  was 
called  "  the  Mine."  Nobody  was  working  it  at  pres- 
ent, It  was  situated  on  an  entered  quarter-section, 
and  some  uncertainty  as  to  the  title  retarded  its 
development. 

Thus  far  the  workings  had  been  limited  to  a  single 


192       THE  HEART  OF  THE  CONTINENT. 

lateral  shaft,  running  into  the  face  of  a  low  bluff  for 
the  distance  of  thirty  or  forty  yards,  and  laid  with  a 
wooden  tramway,  upon  which  were  several  small  cars, 
still  in  good  order.  The  coal  was  instantly  recogniz- 
able as  tertiary,  and  must  have  been  among  the  latest' 
lignite  formations  of  that  period.  The  nearest  brown- 
coal  layers  are,  I  believe,  generally  referred  to  the 
miocene.  This  I  think  subsequent  to  the  miocene. 
The  vein  was  distributed  through  a  bed  of  friable, 
bituminous  shales  and  clay.  Both  the  coal  and  the 
shales  contained  perfect  impressions  of  still  contem- 
porary plants.  We  found  numerous  specimens  of 
leaves  from  both  the  common  varieties  of  cotton- 
wood  and  the  swamp- willow ;  also  of  an  entire  plant 
belonging  to  the  bulrushes.  The  coal  deposit  seemed 
surrounded  by  the  shales  mentioned,  both  above  and 
below.  It  burns  with  a  brisk  flame  and  fragrant  oily 
smoke,  like  the  English  soft  coal,  but  has  much  less 
body,  and  consumes  to  ashes  without  coking.  We 
saw  enough  of  it,  and  heard  sufficiently  of  other  like 
discoveries  near  by,  to  be  sure  that  this  mineral  is 
abundant  about  Denver,  and  may  be  profitably  mined 
for  domestic  purposes. 

I  think  it  not  at  all  improbable  that  petroleum 
will  yet  be  discovered  in  the  Plains  of  Colorado.  Its 
origin  is  not  yet  among  the  certainties  of  science ; 
but  the  only  certain  fact  about  it,  that  it  is  a  result 
of  vegetable  decomposition  under  pressure,  makes  us 
look  for  it  in  the  underdrainage  of  all  such  beds  as 
that  near  Denver.  It  seems  to  play  the  part  of 
molasses  to  the  sugar  of  coal,  comprising  the  carbon 
particles  which  could  not  be  caught  out  of  solution, 
and  brought  within  the  cohesion  of  the  solid  form. 
The  underlying  calcareous  formations  of  the  chalk 


INTO   THE  ROCKY  MOUNTAINS.  193 

and  tertiary  exist  everywhere  over  the  Plains,  in 
basins  which  form  the  most  natural  reservoirs  for  a 
petroleum  deposit,  and  are  often  sufficiently  indu- 
rated to  retain  it, 

On  the  way  back  to  Denver,  we  found  growing  on 
one  of  the  sand-hills  a  running  verbena  entirely  new 
to  both  of  us  ;  in  form  exactly  resembling  the  scarlet 
variety  of  our  gardens,  but  bearing  profuse  blossoms 
of  a  brilliant  blue  tint,  which  would  have  thrown  into 
ecstasies  any  of  those  florists  who  have  spent  such 
effort  to  produce  it  artificially.  We  dug  up  several  of 
the  plants,  and,  the  rain  favoring,  kept  sufficient  soil 
about  the  roots  to  transplant  th^m  successfully  in  Mr. 
Pierce 's  garden  on  our  return. 

The  day  before  we  left  Denver,  we  had  an  oppor- 
tunity to  witness  one  of  those  periodic  incursions  of 
the  Arrapahoe  tribe  of  Indians,  which  led  a  new-come 
Irishman  to  ask  on  one  occasion  "  whether  that  was 
the  reason  why  Americans  called  the  season  Indian 
summer."  In  Denver  nobody  says  "Arrapahoe."  The 
wag  who  first  misquoted  "  Lo  the  poor  Indian  "  has 
perpetuated  himself  in  Denver  by  the  fact  that  In- 
dians there  are  always  called  "the  Lo  Family." 
"How  are  you,  Lo  (or  Mr.  Lo)?"  is  the  familiar 
address  of  a  copper-colored  warrior.  Of  a  sudden, 
just  about  midday,  the  Messrs.,  Mistresses,  Masters, 
and  Misses  Lo  swarmed  in  the  streets  of  Denver,  with 
as  little  preface  as  seventeen-year  locusts.  They 
might  have  come  out  of  holes  in  the  ground.  Some 
of  .the  men  had  magnificent  buffalo-robes,  elegantly 
worked  and  stained  on  the  inside ;  others  had  robes 
of  wolf-skin;  and  I  saw  a  number  of  fine  blankets. 
But  the  majority  of  the  tribe  were  half  naked,  and  in 
a  condition  of  squalid  filth.  One  of  the  squaws  en- 
is 


194  THE  HEART  OF  THE  CONTINENT. 

tered  a  grocery  store  with  a  baby  bound  to  her  back, 
and  a  greasy  blanket  over  all.  In  her  hand  she  held 
some  pieces  of  deer-skin  work  for  barter.  Her  eye 
wandered  with  a  savage  restlessness  over  the  shelves, 
and  fell  to  an  open  barrel  of  brown  sugar.  An  Arra- 
pahoe  can  no  more  resist  sugar  than  a  wasp.  Mrs.  Lo 
uttered  a  guttural  of  exultation,  thrust  the  deer-skin 
into  the  grocer's  hands,  whipped  the  baby  out  of  his 
pouch  in  a  jiffy,  cast  her  blanket  on  the  floor,  and 
after  throwing  into  the  middle  of  it  all  the  sugar  she 
could  scoop  before  the  grocer  cried,  "  Hold ! "  tied  it 
up  composedly  by  the  corners,  hung  it  over  one  arm 
and  her  offspring  over  the  other,  marching  out  of  the 
store  with  all  the  dignity  of  Penthesilea,  and  consid- 
erably fewer  clothes  than  that  royal  Amazon  wore 
on  public  occasions ;  in  other  words,  nothing  but  a 
breech-cloth. 

Towards  nightfall  might  occasionally  be  seen  a 
stalwart  brave  stalking  out  of  the  town  towards  the 
encampment,  metaphorically  speaking  with  his  hands 
in  his  pockets,  and  a  high-bred  insolence  in  his  car- 
riage, followed  by  a  trail  of  wives  laden  with  babies 
and  the  day's  shopping  of  the  family.  I  was  about 
to  utter  a  sneer  at  the  cruelty  of  savage  life,  when  a 
question  occurred  to  me  whether  women  still  carry 
the  heaviest  burdens  in  our  own  civilized  society. 
Here  is  Mrs.  Lo  stumbling  under  twenty  pounds  of 
sugar  and  young  Indian;  but  I  have  known  white 
wives  who  had  loads  to  carry  for  their  lords  some- 
thing heavier  and  far  less  sweet. 

On  the  23d  of  June,  two  of  us  resumed  our  jour- 
ney toward  California,  by  the  Overland  wagon.  The 
other  two  stayed  behind  to  visit  friends  who  had  in- 
troduced Eastern  farming  to  a  well  timbered  tract 


INTO  THE  ROCKY  MOUNTAINS.        195 

of  low  bottom  land  on  the  Platte,  near  Denver.  Our 
party  was  to  reunite  at  Salt  Lake  or  at  some  inter- 
mediate station. 

Nothing  noticeable  occurred  on  the  road  to  Latham 
to  change  the  moonlight  impression  of  it  which  I  have 
heretofore  given,  with  the  exception  of  Arrapahoe  In- 
dians. They  were  on  their  way  southward,  and  those 
we  had  seen  in  or  around  Denver  were  the  mere 
skirmish  line  of  the  tribe.  For  the  first  forty  miles 
out  of  Denver,  we  were  perpetually  meeting  parties 
of  them  on  horseback,  or  encamped  under  black  skin 
tents  resembling  the  Sibley,  and  having  quite  an  im- 
proved style  of  egress  at  the  apex  of  the  cone  for 
the  smoke,  which  among  some  tribes  has  no  means  of 
exit  but  the  front  slit.  They  made  no  hostile  signs, 
being  for  the  present  on  their  summer  tour,  and  not 
their  war-path ;  but  I  could  not  help  thinking  of  them, 
as  I  have  among  lunatics  in  an  asylum,  or  wild  beasts 
in  a  menagerie,  how  little  they  knew  their  power,  or 
how  to  exercise  it.  There  were  enough  of  them  to 
have  swept  away  every  vestige  of  civilization  between 
Latham  and  Pike's  Peak.  The  puniest  woman  who 
could  wield  my  Ballard's  carbine  was  a  match  for  ten 
of  them. 

We  found  tents  pitched  near  several  of  the  stations 
where  we  stopped  to  change  horses,  and  took  advan- 
tage of  the  halt  to  push  our  acquaintance  with  the 
Arrapahoes.  I  was  particularly  anxious  to  see  the 
noble  Indian.  When  a  boy,  I  read  everything  that 
was  ever  written  about  him.  At  that  time  of  life,  I 
regarded  him  as  a  sort  of  every-day  Alexander  the 
Great,  slightly  tinctured  with  Damon  and  Pythias. 
He  principally  followed  burning  himself  at  stakes,  — 
rather  liked  it  than  otherwise, — so  much  so  that  he 


196       THE  HEART  OF  THE  CONTINENT. 

was  in  the  habit  of  requesting  to  be  allowed  to  sug- 
gest whether  hot  pinchers  would  not  be  a  neater 
method  of  ending  the  job.  In  his  intervals  of  ennui, 
he  did  the  lecture  business  on  a  free  basis,  visiting 
public  lyceums  known  by  the  descriptive  title  of  pow- 
wows, and  affording  much  satisfaction  to  audiences, 
chiefly  on  the  themes  of  "  the  Bounding  Deer  "  and 
"  the  Blasted  Pine."  He  was  a  poet,  an  orator,  a 
prophet,  a  hero,  a  highly  educated  and  accomplished 
gentleman,  who,  from  native  simplicity  of  character, 
went  without  his  clothes  on.  The  only  screw  loose 
in  his  whole  construction  was  an  unaccountable  pro- 
pensity to  die  off.  This  was  called  "  fading  before 
the  advance  of  the  cruel  white  man."  When  I 
thought  of  it,  I  felt  ashamed  of  being  white;  I  be- 
longed to  a  cruel  race  that  "advanced;"  I  wished 
that  the  cruel  race  would  only  listen  to  the  good 
people  who  disliked  "  advancing,"  and  consent  to 
stop  it.  As  for  the  female  Indian,  there  was  a  pe- 
riod when  I  pined  for  her.  I  owe  her  many  melan- 
choly months  between  the  ages  of  nine  and  twelve. 
I  remained  faithfuler  to  my  ideal  than  my  ideal 
proved  to  me.  I  remember  what  a  solace  Beadle's 
Dime  Novels  would  have  been  to  me  then,  just  as  I 
.  think  how  much  better  off  I  might  have  been,  had 
chloroform  only  been  invented  when  I  had  my  first 
tooth  out.  "Wishky-Washky,  or  the  Queen  of  the 
Potto watomies,"  would  have  served  me  for  one  good 
dose.  As  it  was,  I  read  Cooper  cumulatively  to  get 
the  same  effect.  Every  Indian  woman  was  beautiful. 
All  you  had  to  do  to  equal  the  Yenus  de  Medici  was 
to  turn  the  color  of  a  new  cent.  The  Indian  woman 
lived  principally  on  shady  banks,  with  her  feet  in  the 
water ;  but  the  same  guilelessness  of  character  which 


INTO   THE  ROCKY  MOUNTAINS.  197 

obviated  a  tailor's  bill  for  her  brother,  guaranteed 
her  against  colds  in  the  head.  She  was  as  pretty  as 
anybody  could  be  who  was  so  pious ;  more  pious 
than  any  white  girl  half  so  pretty.  She  contemplated 
alternately  the  Great  Spirit  in  the  clouds,  and  her  own 
lovely  face  in  the  pool.  If  the  half  that  was  told  of 
her  was  true,  she  could  not  be  accused  of  wasting  her 
time.  How  I  longed  to  see  her !  I  thought  of  her 
whenever  I  was  in  a  grove.  Would  she  steal  out 
from  behind  that  old  chestnut,  give  me  one  quick  an- 
telope-look with  the  meltingest  black  eyes  in  Pagan- 
dom, and,  laughing  like  the  woodrobin's  gurgle,  be 
away  again  among  the  invisible  Dryads  and  Fauns  ? 
Ah,  bright  Alfaratta,  you  jilted  me  !  You  are  a  swin- 
dle, bright  Alfaratta !  I  don't  like  to  say  it  to  a  lady, 
but  you  are,  Alfaratta ;  you  know  you  are. 

I  am  obliged  to  disbelieve  in  the  existence  of  a  beau- 
tiful full-blooded  Indian  woman.  I  know  that  many 
excellent  men,  writing  at  a  distance  from  Indians, 
have  warmly  imaged  such  a  fact,  and  that  a  very  few 
other  excellent  men,  who  have  known  Indians  at 
home,  speak  enthusiastically  of  it.  We  must  remem- 
ber that  almost  any  woman  seems  beautiful  to  a  man 
who  has  seen  none  for  three  months,  as  often  hap- 
pened to  the  old  voyageurs ;  also  that  the  poet  is  quite 
independent  of  facts.  A  priori  it  would  be  possible  to 
disprove  a  beautiful  Indian.  Neither  in  the  physical, 
mental,  or  moral  training  of  the  Indian  woman  exist 
any  of  those  conditions  which  underlie  female  beauty. 
She  is  man's  drudge,  and  shows  it  in  her  face.  Her 
husband  can  sell  her  or  let  her :  she  knows  it,  and 
shows  that.  She  is  ill  fed,  badly  clothed,  depressed  by 
too  rapid  child-bearing ;  she  shows  from  head  to  foot 
that  she  is  all  of  these,  or  that  her  mother  was  before 


198       THE  HEART  OF  THE  CONTINENT. 

her.  It  is  a  manifest  impossibility  for  physical  beauty 
to  exist  under  such  circumstances  by  the  operation 
of  any  known  law.  As  to  studying  the  question  by 
observation,  I  can  only  say  that  I  have  looked  in  vain, 
through  all  that  part  of  the  Continent  we  traversed, 
for  a  single  instance  of  anything  which  the  utmost 
lenience  could  pronounce  beauty  in  an  Indian  woman. 
Nothing  can  be  a  greater  mistake  than  the  popular  no- 
tions regarding  Indian  maternity;  the  getting  and 
rearing  of  a  family  break  them  down,  and  age  them  in 
their  prime,  to  an  extent  more  deplorable  than  among 
our  frailest  American  women.  Their  health  is  poisoned 
by  a  congenital  taint  (which  some  philosophers  have 
insisted  in  foisting  upon  the  whites,  but  which  is  as 
independent  of  them  as  death  itself) ;  their  habits  are 
too  slovenly  to  mention ;  their  digestion  quivers  be- 
tween gorge  and  fast;  they  become  inured  to  the  cold 
at  the  expense  of  stinted  limbs,  narrow  chest,  pro- 
truding abdomens,  and  a  skin  with  the  texture  of 
rawhide.  The  assertions  of  the  last  sentence  apply 
equally  to  the  men.  It  would  be  hard  for  an  imagi- 
native artist  to  give  an  exaggerated  idea  of  the 
extent  to  which  the  Arrapahoes  carry  the  spindle- 
shanked  and  pot-bellied  style  of  human  architecture. 
The  little  children  all  seem  consumed  by  tales  mesen- 
terica.  For  one  boy  of  six  I  could  find  no  simile  but 
a  kettle-drum  standing  on  two  fifes,  with  the  bulge 
forward.  Most  of  the  men  were  gaunt ;  many  under- 
sized; nearly  all  were  shrunken  in  the  calf;  and  I 
saw  none  whose  development  in  any  way  would  have 
attracted  notice  in  an  Eastern  gymnasium.  They 
gave  me  the  impression  of  a  race  on  the  decompos- 
ing grade,  and  a  good  way  down  the  scale.  Their 
faces  were,  without  exception,  gross,  brutal,  selfish, 


INTO  THE  ROCKY  MOUNTAINS.  199 

and  sullen.  Their  occasional  scanty  laugh  was  a  bad 
laugh.  There  was  no  suspicion  even  of  prettiness  in 
the  face  or  form  of  either  man,  woman,  or  child. 

The  horses  of  the  Arrapahoes  and  their  appreciation 
of  them  formed  their  one  strong  point.  Few  of  the 
wiry  little  animals  were  larger  than  a  Kanuck  pony ; 
they  were  all  of  them  ewe-necked,  as  is  inevitable 
with  pasture-feeders ;  here  and  there  was  a  tympan- 
itic  little  cob  which  seemed  to  have  succumbed  to  the 
surrounding  human  contagion,  and  become  pot-bellied 
out  of  complaisance ;  but  their  action  was  good,  their 
color  picturesquely  patched  and  pied,  their  eyes  in- 
telligent, their  training  such  that  they  were  ridden 
without  bridle  (often  without  saddle  either),  guided 
only  by  a  pat  on  the  neck,  and  their  bottom  evi- 
dently immense.  I  felt  some  respect  for  a  large  war- 
rior on  thin  legs  who  refused  our  offer  of  one  hun- 
dred dollars  for  his  stallion. 

On  one  of  these  little  fellows  I  saw  a  boy  and  a 
girl  riding,  with  their  little  brother  between  them,  the 
pony  trotting  away  with  as  much  comfort  as  if  he 
were  carrying  an  empty  sack.  I  think  he  would  not 
have  objected  if  they  had  put  him  under  a  pyramid 
of  the  entire  family.  It  is  certainly  in  the  Indian's 
favor  that  he  belongs  to  one  of  the  few  races  which 
make  their  horse  their  friend.  An  Arrapahoe  baby 
takes  much  the  same  line  of  familiarities  with  his  fa- 
ther's horse  that  a  white  child  indulges  towards  his 
sister's  poodle.  An  Indian  horse  hardly  ever  comes 
vicious  to  the  stable  of  his  first  white  owner.  Not 
until  the  cruel  bit  has  been  substituted  for  the  gentle 
hand-pat,  and  he  has  heard  himself  addressed  in  the 
new  voice  of  enmity,  does  he  learn  to  bite,  kick,  or 
practice  the  still  worse  vice  of  bucking.  It  is  a  pity 


200       THE  HEART  OF  THE  CONTINENT. 

that  civilized  nations  should  be  compelled  to  learn 
the  perfection  of  one  of  the  manliest  arts  from  the 
Nomads  of  Tartary,  the  Plains,  and  the  Arabian  Desert. 
The  horse  is  as  capable  of  friendship  as  the  dog.  The 
more  that  I  see  of  him,  the  more  I  love  his  nature, 
and  the  more  am  I  convinced  that  the  true  side  for 
the  trainer  to  approach  him  on,  is  his  personal  devo- 
tion to  himself.  The  horse  that  cannot  be  approached 
thus,  by  wisdom  and  patience,  I  have  yet  to  see. 

The  nearest  approach  to  luxury  among  the  Arrapa- 
hoes  was  a  sort  of  horse-palanquin,  made  by  suspend- 
ing a  hammock  of  skins  between  two  of  the  lodge- 
poles,  which  are  tied  at  one  end  to  the  horse's  neck, 
when  the  tents  are  struck  for  a  march.  The  other 
ends  of  the  poles  drag  on  the  ground;  and  they  pos- 
sess sufficient  elasticity  to  make  the  hammock  no 
mean  ambulance  for  a  veteran  or  a  sick  person. 

A  little  before  sunset  we  pulled  up  at  the  one  house 
and  the  stables  representing  Latham.  Here  we  took 
tea  from  our  own  supply  chest,  and  passed  the  time 
waiting  for  the  westward  stage  in  sketching  and  bot- 
anizing before  dark,  and  writing  letters  after  it.  The 
stage  arrived  about  ten  o'clock,  and  to  our  great  sat- 
isfaction we  discovered  only  three  inside  passengers 
intending  to  go  further.  Night-riding  in  a  stage  is 
an  occasion  where  misery  decidedly  does  not  love 
company. 

Just  after  leaving  Latham,  we  coiled  ourselves  into 
one  corner  for  a  nap,  but  had  hardly  began  to  nod 
before  we  plunged  down  a  steep  bank,  and  began 
fording  the  South  Platte  at  a  point  where  the  water 
came  just  nicely  over  the  floor  of  the  wagon,  soaking 
our  boots,  gun-cases,  and  blankets  to  perfection.  The 
night  was  dark ;  but,  to  judge  by  feeling,  the  road 


INTO  THE  ROCKY  MOUNTAINS.  201 

during  the  first  half  of  the  night  continued  nearly  as 
level  as  from  Fremont's  Orchard  to  Latham.  We 
dozed  up  the  steep  grades,  and  got  rattled  wide  awake 
down  them,  coming  feverishly  into  the  dawn  during 
our  first  severely  mountainous  climb,  along  the  bed 
of  the  Cache-la-Poudre.  This  stream  is  one  of  the 
most  beautiful  mountain  torrents  which  we  saw  on 
our  entire  journey.  It  comes  from  the  everlasting 
snow-line  of  the  peaks  about  Cheyenne  Pass ;  and  its 
entire  course  to  the  Platte  is  a  roaring  sluice,  broken 
by  no  great  fall,  but  obstructed  by  gigantic  boulders, 
with  a  tolerably  even  grade  and  considerable  winding 
of  direction.  At  Camp  Halleck,  where  we  arrived  at 
sunrise,  the  stream  was  about  thirty  yards  wide,  and 
plunged  through  a  densely  tangled  forest.  The  sol- 
diers encamped  at  this  station  were  a  detachment  of 
Colorado  volunteers,  sent  out  to  watch  the  Utes  and 
Snakes.  I  envied  them  their  trout-fishing.  The  Cache- 
la-Poudre  swarms  with  fine  fish,  and  is  the  most  mys- 
teriously seductive  of  streams  to  an  artist.  We  should 
have  been  glad  to  trace  it  up  to  the  top  of  its  canon, 
but  turned  off  its  course  shortly  after  leaving  Camp 
Halleck,  and  ascended  to  a  new  level. 

We  now  began  to  understand  the  significance  of  the 
title  Kocky  Mountains.  We  had  reached  a  minor  pla- 
teau between  the  snow-ridges,  where  the  granite  and 
sandstone  outcrops  projected  from  fifty  to  three  hun- 
dred feet  above  the  general  sandy  level,  bare  and 
perpendicular  as  the  side  of  a  house,  varied  by  rolling 
buttes  or  ridges  of  similar  height,  thinly  tufted  with 
the  gray  gramma-grass,  and  dotted  with  clumps  of 
sage  brush.  This  was  the  first  place  where  sage,  so 
called  (though  I  believe  it  is  properly  an  artemisia), 
becomes  the  prominent  feature  of  the  Overland  land- 


202       THE  HEART  OF  THE  CONTINENT. 

scape,  though  it  occurs  previously  at  intervals  all  the 
way  from  Denver,  and  other  wormwoods  abound  on 
the  Plains  much  further  east.  The  sage  rises  from  a 
tough  gnarled  root  in  a  number  of  spiral  shoots  which 
finally  twist  together  into  a  single  trunk,  varying  in 
circumference  from  six  inches  to  two  feet,  and  tena- 
cious as  a  hawser.  The  leaves  of  the  plant  are  gray, 
woolly,  and  crisp,  with  a  strong  offensive  smell,  re- 
sembling true  sage.  From  Camp  Halleck  to  the  Wa- 
satch,  almost  the  only  vegetable  life  not  distinctly 
arborescent  greets  the  traveller's  eye  in  the  shape  of 
limitless  wastes  abandoned  to  this  scrubby  sage,  and 
the  equally  scrubby  but  somewhat  greener  "  grease- 
wood."  For  long  stages  between  the  high  timbered 
snow-ridges,  the  only  resource  for  fuel  on  which  the 
emigrant  can  rely  while  following  the  Kocky  Moun- 
tain trail,  is  this  pair  of  dry,  resinous  shrubs ;  and  they 
burn  so  freely  as  to  be  a  great  improvement  on  the 
method  of  boiling  his  kettle  over  dry  buffalo  drop- 
pings, which  he  was  compelled  to  adopt  on  some  level 
stretches  of  the  Plains. 

Where  the  sage  was  lacking,  the  plateau  to  which 
we  had  climbed  from  Camp  Halleck  was  a  mere  clean 
skeleton  of  the  world.  Telescopes  reveal  to  us  a  very 
similar  tract  in  the  moon,  and  geology  takes  us  back 
to  a  time  when  the  earth  was  all  thus.  I  think  that 
the  man  who  stands  where  we  rode  on  the  24th 
of  June,  need  never  be  without  a  tolerably  correct 
idea  of  the  azoic  period,  nor  use  a  glass  to  see  the 
Lunar  Desert.  "We  might  have  been  visiting  this 
sphere  by  some  magical  anachronism  before  the  first 
river  flowed,  or  sea  felt  tidal  fluctuation;  when  as 
yet  there  had  been  neither  Ganoid,  nor  Euripterus, 
nor  Trilobite.  When  we  descended  into  a  depression 


INTO   THE  ROCKY  MOUNTAINS.  203 

of  the  plateau,  there  was  nothing  but  pure  rock  be- 
tween us  and  the  horizon.  Vast  stones  lay  heaped  up 
into  pyramids  as  if  they  had  been  rained  from  the 
sky.  Cubical  masses,  each  covering  an  acre  of  surface 
and  rising  to  a  perpendicular  height  of  thirty  or  forty 
feet,  appeared  in  strange  series  about  a  rude  square, 
irresistibly  suggesting  the  buttresses  of  some  gigantic 
palace  or  prison  whose  superstructure  had  crumbled 
away  with  the  race  of  its  Titanic  builders.  The  most 
remarkable  instance  of  geologic  record  which  I  ever 
saw  or  heard  of,  occurred  in  a  vast  rectangular  pile 
of  altered  red  sandstone,  which  we  encountered  on 
this  tract.  It  was  a  mass  nearly  the  eighth  of  a  mile 
in  circuit,  and  stood  nearly  four-square  to  the  height 
of  a  hundred  feet  or  more  above  a  basin  of  water- 
washed  pebbles.  It  was  a  pile  as  entirely  isolated  as 
the  dome  of  St.  Peter's,  yet  on  its  eastern  face  it  bore 
the  unmistakable  signs  of  having  once  formed  the 
wall  of  a  mighty  cataract.  Its  upper  horizontal  edge 
was  channeled  in  polished  grooves ;  its  face  was 
broken  into  ledges,  and  the  angles  of  these  worn  again 
to  curves ;  there  were  pot-holes  on  the  top  of  the 
rock,  and  gravel  strewn  with  boulders  lining  the  con- 
ical basin  at  its  foot ;  in  fact,  to  one  standing  on  the 
eastern  side  of  the  rock,  there  appeared  every  condi- 
tion requisite  for  a  Niagara,  except  the  water.  That 
was  nowhere  within  sight  or  credibility.  A  poet 
might  have  fancied  that  he  heard  it;  that  it  was  an  in- 
visible fall,  a  ghost  of  some  Old  World  torrent  which 
roared  gently  as  'twere  any  sucking  dove  to  the  vul- 
gar, but  had  rhythm  and  thunder  for  the  ears  which 
can  hear  the  spheres  sing.  To  scientific  eyes  it  was 
such  a  wonder  as  the  Niagara  precipice  might  be  if  a 
cube  of  its  present  mass  were  cut  away  from  the  rest 


204  THE  HEART   OF  THE   CONTINENT. 

of  the  world  on  the  American  and  Canada  side  and  at 
the  upper  end  of  Goat  Island,  the  surrounding  coun- 
try leveled  to  the  plane  of  the  lower  river,  and  the 
water  led  by  some  far  distant  channel  to  the  St.  Law- 
rence. The  man  who,  ten  centuries  afterward,  looked 
on  the  scarred  dry  precipice  resulting  from  such  a 
process,  beheld  the  deep  furrows  of  the  brink,  counted 
the  slippery  shelves  beneath  it,  yet  heard  no  voice  of 
water  break  the  desert  silence,  would  experience 
some  such  sensation  as  I  did  on  beholding  that  Kocky 
Mountain  stone-pile.  Where  did  the  water  come 
from  ?  Where  were  the  successive  terraces,  where  the 
cradling  canon  by  which  the  mighty  freshets  hurled 
themselves  down  from  the  snows  to  grind  this  silex 
into  sand  or  crack  it  into  ledges  ?  To  leap  this  wall 
with  the  force  recorded,  the  water  must  have  de- 
scended a  succession  of  steep  grades  towering  far 
above  the  precipice.  Every  vestige  of  such  forma- 
tions has  been  moved  out  of  the  way  by  some  colossal 
agency,  and  one  might  as  well  look  for  a  cataract 
from  the  roof  of  a  house.  Yet  here  stands  the  unan- 
swerable record, — a  witness  which  has  survived  cata- 
clysm,—  a  monument,  compared  with  which  the  Pyra- 
mids were  things  of  yesterday,  to  a  cataract  whose 
very  bed  had  departed,  like  its  vapor,  from  the  face 
of  the  modern  world. 

Another  curious  formation  of  this  plateau  was  an 
uplift  of  trap-rock  in  the  neighborhood  of  the  sand- 
stone cataract,  taking  the  form  of  a  colossal  steam- 
ship, much  keeled  to  leeward,  and  rising  the  crest  of  a 
lofty  billow  of  sandstone.  At  the  distance  of  forty 
yards,  the  illusion  was  absolutely  startling.  We  could 
see  a  handsome  clean  cut- water,  a  clipper  bow,  a  main- 
mast broken  off  short  at  the  cross-trees,  a  battered 


INTO  THE  ROCKY  MOUNTAINS.  205 

funnel,  a  hatch  with  its  cover  and  combings,  a  pilot- 
house and  a  bowsprit,  with  a  fragment  of  the  jib- 
boom.  Everything  was  made  out  with  such  mimetic 
distinctness  that  we  seemed  to  be  looking  at  some 
petrifaction  where  a  ship,  suddenly  transformed  to 
basalt,  was  foundering  in  a  sea  of  sandstone. 

I  have  mentioned  only  the  two  most  important  of 
many  remarkable  uplifts,  simulating  every  variety  of 
artificial  object  that  is  conceivable  of  execution  in 
stone.  The  human  face  and  figure  seemed  among 
Nature's  most  favorite  subjects  for  burlesque.  In 
all  the  wonderful  suggestions  of  Dore's  "Wandering 
Jew,"  there  is  nothing  to  compare  with  the  frightful 
stone  shapes  and  faces  which  occur  on  this  plateau. 
On  a  bright  sunny  day  like  the  one  we  spent  in  cross- 
ing it,  the  sensation  of  the  traveller  resembles  a  pleas- 
ant nightmare ;  he  feels  that  if  he  stayed  a  night  in 
this  wilderness  of  naked  blocks,  he  would  depart  mad. 
The  tract  is  landscape  gone  demoniacal.  Yet  even 
this  is  weak  art  compared  with  the  sculptures  of  trap 
and  sandstone  further  on  toward  Salt  Lake. 

Ten  miles  of  gradual  climbing  brought  us  out  of- 
this  plateau  to  another  region  of  rolling  ridges,  scan- 
tily timbered  with  cedar,  and  bearing  a  good  crop  of 
gramma  grass.  We  found  an  occasional  rivulet  hi 
the  valleys,  and  strips  of  positive  green  along  its 
course.  Coming  out  of  a  quarry  whose  boundaries 
comprised  a  circuit  of  twenty  miles,  and  whose  blocks 
were  hewn  large  enough  to  make  a  cathedral  out  of 
each  cube,  we  breathed  freer,  and  welcomed  the  sight 
of  verdure  like  a  balm.  I  had  never  understood  be- 
fore the  epic  sublimity  of  that  expression,  "  They 
shall  pray  that  the  mountains  may  fall  on  them,"  nor 
had  I  appreciated  the  horror  of  that  Arabian  Nights' 


206       THE  HEART  OF  THE  CONTINENT. 

talisman  which  enabled  evil  magicians  to  keep  their 
victims  under  the  granite  floor  of  the  world.  There 
was  not  even  the  piteous  relief  of  moss  or  lichen, 
no  sprig  of  wormwood  or  cedar,  no  green  lamina 
of  any  kind,  on  all  those  tremendous  buttresses,  and 
slabs,  and  effigies.  The  slabs  might  have  been  hot 
tiles  on  the  roof  of  some  impenetrable  Dantesque 
hell ;  the  buttresses  waited  for  another  story  to  the 
prison  which  should  build  itself  to  heaven ;  the  effi- 
gies were  devil-sentries  guarding  the  ramparts.  No 
picture  can  be  on  a  scale  sufficiently  large  to  give 
any  idea  of  the  effect  produced  by  these  formations 
on  an  eye-witness.  Almost  everybody  of  Oriental 
propensities  has  formed  to  himself  some  notion  of 
the  way  Domdaniel,  Vathek,  and  Aladdin  caverns 
might  be  expected  to  look.  But  if  any  such  person, 
of  however  vivid  fancy,  will  pass  from  the  head  of 
the  Cache  la  Poudre  to  Virginia  Dale,  without  con- 
fessing that  his  most  ambitious  ideals  have  been 
utterly  surpassed,  and  his  mind  fairly  confounded,  by 
the  hard  realities  of  trap  and  sandstone,  I  will  be 
sure  that  I  have  not  been  modest  in  estimating  other 
men's  imagination  by  my  own. 

Between  a  series  of  perpendicular  sandstone  uplifts 
from  two  to  five  hundred  feet  high,  and  descending 
again  to  another  green  valley  level,  we  reached  Vir- 
ginia Dale  about  noon.  We  had  grown  so  fascinated 
with  the  scenery  since  daybreak  that  we  resolved  to 
leave  the  stage,  and  stop  over  till  the  next  day.  I  do 
not  know  whether  I  have  heretofore  more  than  infer- 
entially  mentioned  how  great  a  convenience  we  found 
the  Overland  Company's  license,  always  granted  their 
travellers,  to  lie  by  whenever  and  as  long  as  we  pleased, 
without  invalidating  the  contract  for  through  passage. 


INTO  THE  ROCKY  MOUNTAINS.  207 

We  had  only  to  mark  on  our  large  baggage  the  address 
in  Salt  Lake  City  where  it  should  be  left  to  await  us, 
and  take  our  minor  traps,  such  as  guns,  artists'  ma- 
terial, blankets,  and  small  stores,  into  camp  or  ranch 
with  us  till  we  resumed  our  route.  By  stopping  at 
Virginia  Dale,  we  should  give  the  remaining  two  of 
our  party  a  chance  to  catch  up  with  us,  and  have 
a  better  opportunity  for  sidewise  explorations  than 
might  again  be  afforded  us  in  the  heart  of  the  Eocky 
Mountain  system. 

The  Virginia  Dale  Station  is  752  miles  from  Atchi- 
son,  and  about  1300  from  San  Francisco.  It  is  situ- 
ated in  a  continuation  of  that  lofty  furrow  of  the 
range  known  as  the  Cheyenne  Pass.  A  log-ranch 
and  stables  constitute  the  entire  station.  Beyond 
the  buildings  southerly,  a  mountain  stream  winds 
into  a  dense  forest.  Across  the  Overland  trail,  north 
of  the  house,  rises  a  congeries  of  round  gray  moun- 
tains fifteen  hundred  feet  in  average  height  from  the 
trail  level,  packed  together  in  such  close  order  that 
they  resembled  a  school  of  porpoises  coming  up  to 
breathe.  Just  below  the  house  to  the  eastward,  a 
little  rivulet  sang  its  way  round  coquettish  curves  to 
the  large  trout-stream  in  the  far  jungle,  through  a 
meadow  golden  green  in  patches  where  the  water 
eddied  back  and  the  sun  fell  directly.  "We  were  told 
that  trout  swarmed  within  five  miles  of  us ;  but  there 
was  not  force  enough  at  the  station  to  spare  us  guides 
or  escort,  and  we  had  moreover  but  little  desire  to 
catch  fish  when  our  finest  crops  of  literary  and  ar- 
tistic hay  ought  to  be  making.  We  were  indebted 
for  an  unusually  comfortable  reception  at  Virginia 
Dale  (not  to  speak  here  of  other  places)  to  the  kind 
thoughtfulness  of  Mr.  Otis,  the  Overland  Koad  super- 


208      THE  HEART  OF  THE  CONTINENT. 

intendent.  We  called  on  him  at  Denver  with  letters 
from  his  brother,  the  well  known  artist,  author,  and 
physician,  our  friend  Doctor  Fessenden  N.  Otis  of 
New  York ;  found  him  absent  on  the  line,  left  the 
notes  for  him,  and  never  afterwards  were  fortunate 
enough  to  meet  him  personally.  Just  as  we  resumed 
our  route  from  Denver,  a  very  pleasant  letter  of  in- 
formation and  guidance  was  put  into  our  hands ;  and 
we  were  not  only  instructed  how  to  find  the  best 
things,  but  enabled  to  enjoy  them  comfortably  by 
still  another  letter  from  Mr.  Otis,  addressed  to  all  the 
employees  of  the  road,  enjoining  them  to  grant  us 
every  facility  for  stopping  to  sketch  or  geologize 
which  did  not  involve  exorbitant  delay  of  the  mail, 
and  to  treat  us,  in  every  respect  of  fare  and  accom- 
modations, as  his  personal  friends.  This  courtesy  on 
his  part  was  so  liberal  and  hearty,  and  showed  such 
warm  appreciation  of  our  objects,  that  we  were  more 
surprised  than  we  need  to  have  been  after  knowing 
another  member  of  his  family. 

At  Virginia  Dale  we  drew  this  kindly  document 
for  the  first  time,  and  presented  it  at  the  station- 
keeper,  who  instantly  surrendered  us  the  best  bed  he 
had  in  the  house,  with  the  exception  of  his  own,  and 
assured  us  we  might  have  had  that  if  his  wife  were 
not  then  sick  on  it  with  a  violent  intermittent  fever. 
I  could  not  imagine  where  a  person  could  contract 
such  a  disease  in  this  region,  and  found  that  it  be- 
longed to  those  rare  cases  which  get  settled  in  some 
one  of  the  Western  States  too  deeply  to  be  cured  at 
once  by  the  Rocky  Mountains.  Poor  little  wife ! 
What  a  terrible  distance  from  everything  to  have 
chills  and  fever !  I  caught  a  single  glimpse  of  the 
patient  as  her  husband  passed  into  the  sick-room, 


INTO   THE  ROCKY  MOUNTAINS.  209 

and  saw,  through  all  the  expression  of  suffering  which 
her  face  wore,  a  delicate,  refined  prettiness  most  un- 
expected in  this  savage  wilderness.  Love,  however, 
seemed  to  make  that  tract  bloom  in  the  teeth  of 
ague.  I  never  saw  a  man  kinder  to  his  wife  than  the 
station-keeper.  He  was  obliged,  in  her  default,  to 
manage  every  detail  of  housekeeping ;  and  conjugal 
fidelity  raised  him  to  the  level  of  the  occasion.  I  do 
not  believe  the  skillfullest  artist  could  scour  a  pan  to 
begin  with  that  unaccustomed  male  who  learned  it 
yesterday  for  his  wife's  sake.  His  success  in  the 
initial  batch  of  tea-biscuit  I  regard  explicable  on  the 
ground  of  inspiration.  Confiding  and  clinging  to  the 
last,  like  all  our  sex,  he  took  in  the  dough  to  be  in- 
spected by  the  invalid,  who  entertained  an  indulgent 
spirit  toward  it,  and  relieved  him  from  apprehensions. 
He  was  not  afraid  of  it  any  more,  but  put  it  in  the 
oven,  and  stayed  by  it  with  no  one  else  near  him,  till 
it  came  out  a  triumphant  straw-color,  and  tasted  less 
like  equal  quantities  of  lard  and  potash  than  any 
Rocky  Mountain  tea-cake  which  I  ever  approached 
with  a  consciousness  of  my  imminent  peril.  But  to 
see  the  station-keeper  in  his  great  dish-washing  act 
was  to  witness  the  favorite  spectacle  of  the  gods, — 
a  good  man  struggling  under  difficulties.  A  trifle 
redder  in  the  face,  but  feeling  morally  developed,  he 
came  out  of  Destiny  and  the  Dish-kettle  without  a 
nick  in  any  of  his  crockery,  left  no  grease-streaks 
when  he  wiped  the  plates,  and  lived  fully  up  to  his 
privileges  in  the  fidelity  with  which  he  washed  out 
the  dish-cloth. 

Beside  this  excellent  man  and  his  wife,  there  lived 
in  the  house  a  pair  of  stable-helpers  and  such  drivers 
as  stopped  there  transiently  during  off-hours.  With 

14 


210       THE  HEART  OF  THE  CONTINENT. 

these   lodgers  we  were  to  share   one  of  the   three 
apartments  into  which  the  house  was  divided. 

After  dinner,  (which  in  admiration  of  the  station- 
man's  great  qualities,  we  cooked  for  ourselves),  we  set 
out  to  explore  the  porpoise-back  mountains  which 
rolled  away  to  the  northward  of  the  road.  We  had 
under-estimated  their  height  at  starting,  and  found 
that  the  climb  to  their  highest  cone  took  us  a  full 
hour.  Our  way  led  along  the  upper  course  of  the 
brook,  which  waters  the  meadow  before  the  ranch,  to 
a  series  of  deep  rifts  or  canons  channeled  in  the  side 
of  the  mountains  by  freshets  at  the  season  of  snow- 
melting,  but  now  dry  as  ashes,  and  paved  with  enor- 
mous boulders.  Up  the  steep  incline  of  one  of  these 
canon  bottoms,  and  under  the  shade  of  occasional 
maples  or  aspens  which  still  throve  along  the  slopes 
on  memories  of  last  spring's  moisture,  we  clambered 
to  the  bald  gray  top  of  the  mountain.  We  were 
rewarded  by  a  fine  bird's-eye  view  of  the  country 
traversed  since  sunrise,  and  immediately  below  us 
stretched  delicious  green  bottom  lands  watered  by  a 
third  mountain  brook.  Everywhere  our  horizon  is 
bounded  by  snow-peaks.  We  stand  at  the  summit  of 
mountain  piled  on  mountain,  but  yonder  are  colossal 
ridges  which  look  down  measurelessly  far  to  laugh  at 
us.  Still  further  on  rise  peaks  as  much  higher  than 
they  as  they  than  we,  or  we  than  Denver.  As 
for  matters  right  under  foot,  we  find,  in  the  first 
place,  that  these  round  mountains  are  a  formation 
of  flesh-colored  granite,  largely  feldspathic,  and  ex- 
isting, wherever  it  outcrops  to  the  weather,  in  a  state 
as  friable  and  incoherent  as  the  softest  pudding-stone. 
This  was  the  locality  in  which,  as  I  have  heretofore 
mentioned,  I  kicked  several  large  boulders  entirely 


INTO   THE   ROCKY   MOUNTAINS.  211 

to  pieces  in  a  few  minutes,  leaving  a  mere  gravel-bed 
of  crystals.  Wherever  a  granite  mass  outcropped 
above  the  thin  sand  and  gramma,  I  observed  that  its 
form  followed  the  same  haystack  or  mushroom  con- 
tour presented  by  the  mountains  themselves.  Several 
of  the  outcrops  were  very  narrow  in  proportion  to 
their  heights,  standing  in  round- topped  pillars  five 
or  six  feet  high,  with  nearly  the  proportions  of  a 
Bologna  sausage.  The  merest  tap  shook  them  down. 
From  the  similarity  of  their  forms,  I  inferred  that  the 
mountains,  as  well  as  the  minor  outcrops,  were  masses 
of  rotten  granite  which  had  been  weathered  into  a 
spheroidal  surface,  though  I  had  never  before  im- 
agined the  rock  occurring  in  such  quantity  so  com- 
pletely decomposed.  Several  Eocky  Mountain  hares, 
a  distant  herd  of  antelope,  a  young  elk,  and  a  villain- 
ous looking  gray  wolf,  who  slunk  on  seeing  us  into 
the  indistinctness  of  the  similarly  hued  sage-brush, 
were  the  quadrupeds  who  came  into  our  field ;  we 
saw  several  mourning-doves  and  plovers;  and,  coming 
down  into  the  valley  again,  made  unavailing  search 
along  the  brook  for  a  wonderful  "  fish  with  hands," 
which  the  stable-boys  had  seen  there,  and  which,  from 
their  poetical  description,  we  hoped  might  be  a  new 
species  of  siren,  or  some  other  equally  interesting 
amphibian. 

The  next  day,  our  friends  came  along  in  the  stage, 
and  we  rejoined  them.  Our  road  for  the  next  fifteen 
miles  traversed  an  undulating  tract  like  that  between 
the  stony  plateau  and  Virginia  Dale,  tolerably  green 
and  well  watered  from  the  snow-peaks.  As  we  pro- 
ceeded, the  undulations  became  lower,  and  presently 
merged  into  the  magnificent  level  of  the  Laramie 
Plains.  This  is  one  of  the  world's  largest  and  loftiest 


212       THE  HEART  OF  THE  CONTINENT. 

intra-montane  plateaus.  It  occupies  a  surface  of 
about  fifty  miles  square ;  is  as  smooth  as  an  Illinois 
prairie  ;  and  the  sensation  of  finding  such  a  lowland 
tract  at  the  height  of  eight  thousand  feet  in  the  air, 
is  a  bewilderment  to  all  one's  previous  notions  of 
physical  geography.  The  plateau  is  an  alluvial  de- 
posit, belonging,  so  far  as  I  could  learn  from  a  per- 
pendicular section  on  the  west  bank  of  Big  Laramie 
River,  to  the  late  tertiary.  This  appeared  to  consist 
of  alternating  white  and  yellow  striae,  representing 
two  varieties  of  silt,  the  former  almost  purely  cre- 
taceous, the  latter  partly  so,  but  mostly  composed  of 
alumina  with  a  tinge  of  red  oxide  of  iron  or  chro- 
mium. I  nowhere  noticed  an  outcrop  of  rocks  be- 
longing to  the  mountain  system.  The  grass  was 
nearly  as  luxuriant  and  green  as  a  New  England 
June  meadow.  Its  level  in  the  general  view  seemed 
uniform  as  the  sea;  and  such  special  deviations  as  oc- 
curred here  and  there,  were  not  of  the  ordinary  roll- 
ing contour  proper  to  the  Plains,  but  rather  seemed 
terrace  formations.  To  understand  the  strangeness 
of  such  a  landscape  in  such  a  position,  it  must  be 
remembered  that  this  vast  plain  not  only  stands  at 
an  elevation  of  eight  thousand  feet,  but  is  walled  on 
all  sides  by  mountains  nearly  as  much  higher  than 
itself.  Just  as  we  enter  the  Plain  by  its  eastern 
boundary  coming  from  Cheyenne  Pass,  we  catch  a 
glorious  glimpse  of  the  Laramie  Butte,  its  snow  shin- 
ing like  a  white-hot  mass  in  the  dazzling  sunlight ; 
its  form  almost  a  perfect  cone,  its  height  rated 
among  the  loftiest  snow-peaks  of  the  range.  It 
stands  as  a  sort  of  northeastern  bastion  to  the  enor- 
mous •  square,  and  from  it,  westward,  lead  the  giant 
ramparts  of  the  Wind  River  range,  with  an  occa- 


INTO  THE  ROCKY  MOUNTAINS.  213 

sional  snow-crowned  turret,  towards  Fremont's  and 
Lander's  Peaks.  On  the  southern  side  of  the  plateau, 
in  a  direction  nearly  parallel  to  the  Wind  Eiver  chain, 
runs  a  long  black  range  of  rolling  mountains,  three  or 
four  thousand  feet  high  above  the  Plains  level,  bare  as 
the  bumps  on  a  phrenologist's  cast,  and  possessing  the 
rounded  contour  which  I  had  found  associated  with 
rotten  granite.  Behind  us  the  square  is  almost  closed 
by  the  time  we  reach  the  lowest  bottom,  through  the 
intervention  of  those  crags  and  cones  we  have  left 
around  Virginia  Dale.  To  the  due  westward  rises  a 
succession  of  rugged  granite  stairs  climbing  up  to  the 
mighty  Medicine  Bow  Mountains,  under  whose  snows 
we  shall  shiver  to-morrow;  and  from  the  middle  of 
the  Plains,  through  a  gap  at  the  southwestern  corner 
of  our  bounding  walls,  we  get  the  most  ravishing  view 
of  distant  snow-ranges  that  was  ever  vouchsafed  Na- 
ture's lover  in  this  world.  I  have  seen  many  isolated 
peaks  which  surpassed  those  of  this  particular  view, 
but  I  never  in  my  life  imagined  equal  beauty  in  a 
range  itself.  These  mountains  belonged  to  the  Uin- 
tah  system,  another  transverse  range  like  the  Wind 
River,  running  from  Green  River,  near  the  109th 
parallel  of  longitude,  to  inosculate  with  the  Wahsateh 
range  near  Utah  Lake.  This  was  our  first  view  of 
Mormondom ;  and  I  could  not  wonder  that  when  thajb 
strange  company  of  enthusiasts,  led  by  Brigham 
Young,  caught  such  a  glimpse  as  this  of  the  land 
beyond  them,  they  were  filled  with  an  ecstasy  which 
spent  itself  in  prayers,  dreams,  and  prophesyings. 
I  can  think  of  no  resemblance  for  it,  save  my  childish 
impressions  of  an  old  steel  engraving,  called  "The 
Mount  of  God."  Mature  taste  may  condemn  such 
prints  with  the  nightmares  of  Fuseli  and  the  resurrec- 


214       THE  HEART  OF  THE  CONTINENT. 

tions  of  Martin ;  but  my  propensity  for  the  marvelous 
was  too  much  gratified  to  let  me  be  critical.  So  was 
it  here.  The  view  was  not  explicable  by  the  ordinary 
ideals  of  terrestrial  scenery ;  it  was  a  fairy  phantasm, 
a  floating  cloud,  a  beatific  dream  of  paradisaical 
ranges,  let  down  out  of  heaven,  not  builded  out  of 
earth.  The  sunlight  fell  on  it  out  of  a  spotless  sky  ; 
every  square  inch  of  the  range  received  its  maximum 
of  illumination,  so  that  its  shadows  were  only  less 
relieved  against  greater  lights,  and  seemed  spots  of 
vague  turquoise,  sapphire,  or  pale  amethyst  on  a  float- 
ing mist  of  diamond  or  opal  vapor.  These  gross  com- 
parisons come  as  near  the  impression  as  words  of 
mine  can ;  but  my  reader  must  take  a  step  in  ideal- 
ism for  himself,  and  imagine  all  these  gems  glorified 
by  distance  into  the  spirits  of  themselves.  The  near- 
est peaks  of  the  Uintah  were  at  least  a  hundred 
miles  from  us,  and  rose  from  a  lower  level  than  our- 
selves ;  yet  none  of  us  needed  to  be  told  that  they 
were  among  the  grandest  of  the  whole  Cordillera. 
They  vindicated  themselves  to  the  kingly  title  by 
the  ermine  of  snow  and  the  diamonds  of  ice,  together 
making  them  one  continuous  splendor  half  way  from 
foot  to  crest. 

Our  way  lay  across  the  southern  third  of  the  level. 
On  each  side  of  us  the  grass  was  luxuriant,  and  every- 
where a  nearer  approach  to  Eastern  meadows  in  its 
greenness  than  any  of  the  herbage  on  the  Plains 
proper.  There  were  no  settlements  visible  except  at 
the  stations ;  and  these  consisted  merely  of  the  build- 
ings demanded  by  the  road.  We  passed  several  large 
trains  of  cattle-wagons,  all  of  them  belonging  to 
Gentile  emigrants  (the  Mormon  trains  preferring  the 
northern  or  Laramie  route) ;  and  in  one  place,  where 


INTO  THE  ROCKY  MOUNTAINS.  215 

they  had  halted  for  the  day,  the  camp,  with  its  snowy 
wagon-tilts,  its  leaping  fires,  its  picturesque  back- 
woodsmen, women,  and  children,  and  the  oxen  brows- 
ing or  lying  down  in  the  sweet  thick  grass,  made  a 
very  pretty  spectacle. 

The  Indian  still  has  free  range  over  this  delightful 
plain.  The  antelope  abounds  on  it ;  every  variety  of 
grouse  found  in  the  range  is  plenty  here ;  deer,  bear, 
and  elk  are  numerous  in  the  fastnesses  of  the  sur- 
rounding mountains ;  and  so  long  as  the  sun  shines 
warm,  no  tract  can  be  a  better  antetype  of  the  In- 
dians' happy  hunting-grounds.  As  if  in  recognition 
of  this  likeness,  the  tribes  had  here  and  there  on  the 
plain  erected  curious  mausoleums  for  their  departed 
braves,  consisting  of  a  high  pole-staging,  upon  which 
the  dead  lay,  wrapped  in  his  blankets  in  the  open  air. 
In  no  case  where  we  passed  these  strange  monuments 
were  we  offended  by  odors  of  decomposition.  This 
fact  is  one  of  the  strongest  illustrations  of  the  char- 
acter of  the  Kocky  Mountain  atmosphere,  and  espe- 
cially of  that  part  of  it  which  floats  dissolved  with 
the  purest  sunlight  over  Laramie  Plains.  The  air  is 
different  from  that  on  the  eastern  slope  of  the  Appala- 
chians very  much  in  the  same  kind  that  muriatic  acid 
differs  from  muriate  of  ammonia.  Muriate  of  ammo- 
nia contains  acid  which  has  been  satisfied :  the  air 
contains  oxygen  in  its  passive  state.  There  are  some 
localities  in  the  mountains  where  the  ozone  tests  fail 
of  a  discovery  for  months  at  a  time ;  throughout  the 
mountains,  and  a  distance  of  many  miles  eastward  on 
the  Plains,  iron  lies  out-of-doors  a  year  at  a  time 
without  perceptible  rusting;  such  consumptives  as 
come  to  this  region,  and  settle  no  higher  up  the  range 
than  they  can  preserve  their  ease  of  respiration,  find 


216      THE  HEART  OF  THE  CONTINENT. 

their  disease  remarkably  retarded.  There  are  several 
theories  looking  toward  an  explanation  of  the  passive 
oxygen  accumulated  toward  the  centre  of  the  Conti- 
nent. It  has  been  found  that  the  air  interpolated  be- 
tween water  globules  contains  a  much  higher  per  cent, 
of  active  oxygen.  The  vapor  of  the  sea-board,  on  its 
way  towards  the  Kocky  Mountains,  undergoes  pro- 
gressive condensation  upon  every  eminence,  alternat- 
ing with  rarefaction  over  every  heated  plain.  Both 
the  water  that  ascends  into  the  higher  stratum  of 
clouds  to  be  wafted  westward  for  final  condensation 
on  the  loftiest  snow-peaks  of  the  Rocky  range,  and 
that  which  falls  in  showers  between  the  Appalachians, 
or  the  Gulf  margin  and  the  rainless  regions  of  the 
Platte,  contain  between  their  globules  a  large  per 
cent,  of  all  the  ozonized  air  which  they  have  met 
in  their  passage  through  the  atmosphere.  Thus  in 
either  case,  whether  the  ozone  goes  entangled  with 
the  water  into  the  soil  or  the  supra-human  regions  of 
the  atmosphere,  all  the  middle  space  occupied  by  the 
range  and  its  neighboring  plains  has  suffered  a  defil- 
tration  of  its  ozone.  If  this  view  of  mine  be  correct, 
we  may  naturally  look  for  a  powerfully  ozonized  at- 
mosphere on  the  highest  peaks  of  the  Rocky  Moun- 
tains. Another  theory  suggests  that  the  ozone  of 
the  sea-board  atmosphere  is  only  an  allotropic  condi- 
tion of  all  the  oxygen  present  resulting  from  the 
decomposition  of  sea- water,  electrical  currents  created 
by  the  friction  of  dry  and  wet  air,  or  from  both,  and 
that  with  the  removal  of  these  conditions,  as  by  trans- 
portation inland,  the  oxygen  returns  to  its  passive, 
and,  on  this  hypothesis,  its  normal  state.  I  prefer  the 
former  view,  as  consistent  with  the  experiments  of 
Schonbein  and  his  theory  of  the  duplex  constitution 
of  aerial  oxygen  by  a  plus  and  a  minus  element. 


INTO  THE  ROCKY  MOUNTAINS.  217 

However  we  may  philosophize  about  it,  the  fact  is 
there.  All  the  processes  of  Nature,  which  require 
abundance  of  active  oxygen,  are  retarded,  or  even  in 
some  cases  nearly  arrested,  in  the  Plains  and  the  Rocky 
Mountain  region  below  the  snow  limits.  Tuberculous 
disease  necessitates  the  oxidation  of  a  larger  amount 
of  tissue  than  the  digestion  can  replace.  On  reaching 
Colorado,  the  patient  finds  the  equilibrium  between 
waste  and  reparation  partially  restored,  by  what  we 
may  call  the  pacification  of  his  inhaled  oxygen ;  the 
tuberculous  deposits  are  arrested  at  their  present 
stage,  the  immature  remaining  nearly  stationary,  and 
the  mature  cicatrizing  after  a  fashion  which  some- 
times quite  surprises  the  Eastern  practitioner.  This  is 
not  the  place  to  inquire  how  far  the  unhealthy  prod- 
ucts of  a  strumous  diathesis  may  accumulate  else- 
where after  they  cease  to  be  consumed  in  the  lungs. 
As  it  is  the  oxidation  rather  than  the  accumulation 
which  leads  directly  to  a  mortal  result  in  such  cases, 
when  we  have  retarded  oxidation  we  have  lengthened 
life.  To  the  consumptive  patient,  who  has  a  particfu- 
lar  interest  in  living  as  long  as  possible,  the  climate 
of  Colorado  offers  one  of  the  finest  sanitaria  in  the 
world.  This  will  be  one  of  the  leading  advantages  of 
the  Territory  as  soon  as  our  Pacific  Kailroad  has  made 
Denver  accessible  to  invalids.  I  hope,  before  many 
years  have  elapsed,  to  see  some  of  the  pleasantest 
sites  on  the  foot-hills  between  Denver  and  the  Arkan- 
sas occupied  by  institutions  for  the  accommodation 
and  treatment  of  patients  attacked  by  pulmonary 
diseases  in  the  East.  When  the  Parks  become  attain- 
able by  any  ordinary  means  of  transport,  they  may 
form  territory  for  the  regeneration  of  the  race  in  this 
particular ;  scrofula  dying  out  of  the  blood  of  succes- 


218      THE  HEART  OF  THE  CONTINENT. 

sive  generations  reared  here,  until  it  shall  be  impossi- 
ble to  find  a  baby  with  the  least  congenital  taint.  To 
be  sure,  the  Indians  are  decaying  away  over  this  iden- 
tical tract;  but  their  scourge  is  a  worse  one  than  sim- 
ple scrofula,  being  none  other  than  scrofula's  worst 
and  most  invincible  parent. 

As  a  mere  selfish  matter,  apart  from  the  obvious 
humanitarian  motives  which  I  never  yet  found  it 
necessary  to  urge  upon  any  true  member  of  the  noble 
profession  of  medicine,  I  should  strongly  advise  the 
physician  whose  studies  had  been  specially  directed 
toward  pulmonary  disease,  if  he  wished  to  make  him- 
self a  name  and  a  fortune,  to  open  a  house  for  the 
reception  of  consumptives  either  at  Denver  or  Colo- 
rado City.  At  the  latter  spot  he  might  still  further 
enlarge  the  sphere  of  his  institution,  by  receiving  the 
classes  of  patients  in  whose  cases  the  various  Fontaine 
qui  Bouille  waters  can  be  employed  with  benefit. 

To  return  to  the  Laramie  Plains.  This  vast  level 
has  an  interest  beside  its  vernal  beauty  of  herbage  : 
its  grand  entourage  of  mountains;  the  exhilarating 
elixir  of  its  air,  which  bears  infallible  evidence  of 
coming  fresh  from  the  alembic,  virgin  from  all  lungs 
except  one's  own;  the  glorious  glimpses  of  the  snow- 
peaks  toward  Quien  Hornet,  and  the  far  ghost  of 
white-robed  Laramie.  The  plain  is  one  of  those  nodal 
points  in  the  physical  geography  of  the  Continent 
which  must  always  form  the  most  engrossing  objects 
of  research  to  the  catholic  student  or  far-sighted 
originator  of  national  enterprise.  Where  man  can 
work  with  nature,  he  saves  himself  an  immense  deal  of 
drudgery.  When  he  discovers  the  natural  system  of 
communications  on  a  continent,  he  possesses  knowl- 
edge of  the  highest  possible  use  to  him  in  running 


INTO  THE  ROCKY  MOUNTAINS.  219 

his  own  artificial  lines  with  facility.  The  study  of  the 
natural  system  leads  him  directly  to  the  perception 
of  certain  nodal  points  on  the  earth's  surface,  to  hold 
which  is  to  hold  all  the  empire  between  them.  Thus, 
if  it  be  conceivable  that  any  new  Alexander  should 
arise  to  struggle  for  universal  empire,  he  would 
practically  succeed  (in  the  present  state  of  artificial 
communication)  when  he  had  possessed  himself  of 
the  Straits  of  Gibraltar,  the  Isthmus  of  Suez,  the  en- 
trance to  the  Red  Sea,  the  isthmuses  joining  North 
and  South  America.  Similarly  the  great  passes  and 
intra-montane  plateaus  of  the  Rocky  range  involve 
in  their  possession  the  power  to  dictate  to  New  York 
and  California  upon  many  of  their  common  matters, 
and  the  ability  at  will  to  unite  them  by  the  strongest 
ties  of  national  cohesion,  or  eventually  break  up  vital 
communication  between  them.  The  West  side  of  the 
Continent  is  overwhelmingly  loyal  in  its  animus ; 
proud  of  the  American  Union  and  its  own  position  in 
it.  But  the  Pacific  States  will  in  time  grow  to  be 
self-sufficient.  They  will  grow,  manufacture,  import 
for  themselves;  and  when  that  maturity  arrives,  the 
homogeneity  of  the  two  coasts  will  and  should  de- 
pend upon  the  degree  of  facility  afforded  to  intercom- 
munication. So  long  as  it  remains  a  formidable 
undertaking  to  pass  between  New  York  and  San 
Francisco,  so  long  will  there  develop  an  independ- 
ence of  interest  and  feeling  which,  however  gradual 
and  imperceptible,  cannot  fail  to  result  in  two  dis- 
tinct nations. 

The  value  to  the  future  statesman  and  engineer  of 
such  nodal  points  as  we  have  mentioned,  is  well  illus- 
trated by  a  description  of  the  South  Pass  occurring  in 
ex-Governor  Gilpin's  interesting  book,  uThe  Central 


220       THE  HEART  OF  THE  CONTINENT. 

Gold  Region."  Laramie  Plains  are  a  level  of  similar 
interest.  This  level  is  a  justification  of  the  Spanish 
name  of  the  system,  —  Sierra  Madre,  or  Mother-Range. 
It  is  one  of  a  group  of  mothers  occurring  along  the  axis 
of  the  Range,  out  of  whose  loins  come  the  grand  riv- 
ers which  irrigate  the  Continent.  From  the  Plains  of 
the  South  Pass,  and  the  vast  ranges  on  whose  summit 
the  plateau  is  upborne,  flow  the  Missouri  and  the  Yel- 
lowstone to  the  easterly ;  the  Snake,  or  principal  fork 
of  the  Columbia,  to  the  westward;  and  in  a  direction 
south  by  westerly  the  Green,  or  main  branch  of  the 
Colorado  River.  Either  by  themselves  or  their  canons 
and  valleys,  which  radiate  towards  one  common  cen- 
tre in  the  Plains  of  the  Pass,  these  rivers  facilitate 
communication  between  the  Mississippi  and  the  Great 
Salt  Lake  basins,  offering  a  series  of  nearly  connected 
galleries  or  grades  rather  to  the  revision  than  to  the 
reconstruction  of  the  civil  engineer.  The  Laramie 
Plains  form  another  level,  important  for  the  same  rea- 
sons, if  not  in  the  same  degree.  The  level  and  its 
inclosing  mountains  form  a  reservoir  for  far  less  volu- 
minous and  extensive  streams  than  those  rising  out 
of  the  South  Pass  plateau,  but  offer  better  opportuni- 
ties for  the  study  of  the  phenomena  of  the  system 
than  if  their  own  were  more  complicated.  The  moun- 
tain mesa  which  has  the  Laramie  Plains  for  its  upper 
surface,  is  almost  cinctured  by  the  North  Platte  River. 
The  South  Platte  has  its  origin  in  South  Park ;  its 
net-work  of  tributaries  may  almost  be  said  to  inoscu- 
late on  the  north  side  with  those  running  into  Middle 
Park  for  the  formation  of  the  Blue  Fork  of  the  Colo- 
rado ;  the  Blue  Fork  receives  another  system  of  trib- 
utaries running  southerly  from  North  Park,  and  this 
system  again  interpenetrates  that  of  the  tributaries 


INTO  THE  ROCKY  MOUNTAINS.  221 

running  northward  to  compose  the  North  Platte  in 
the  area  of  the  same  Park.  Behind  that  grim  range 
of  bare,  black  mountains  which  form  the  southern 
wall  of  the  Laramie  Plateau,  the  North  Platte  is  wind- 
ing in  a  general  westerly  direction  out  of  the  snow- 
peaks  which  nurture  its  infancy.  Eighty  miles  west 
of  the  Laramie  Plains  summit  level,  it  makes  an  ab- 
rupt bend  to  the  north,  and  thence  preserves  this 
direction  to  the  western  butment  of  that  noble  range 
which  forms  the  northern  wall,  taking  in,  near  this 
corner,  the  Medicine  Bow  Creek,  which  has  descended 
from  a  magnificent  congeries  of  snow-peaks,  to  be 
climbed  by  us  on  the  morrow,  and  has  followed  a 
higher  terrace  of  the  same  slope  as  the  North  Platte 
across  the  entire  west  side  of  the  mesa.  A  step  fur- 
ther on,  the  North  Platte  receives  the  Sweetwater 
from  the  west,  and,  passing  around  a  bastion  of  the 
Wind  Eiver  system,  turns  nearly  due  east  to  enter  the 
lower  Plains  near  Fort  Laramie,  receiving  en  route 
innumerable  further  tributaries,  all  of  which  rise  from 
the  north  slope  of  the  Wind  River  system,  excepting 
the  Laramie  River  itself.  This  latter  stream  is  formed 
by  the  junction  of  two  forks,  the  Big  and  Little  Lara- 
mie, both  of  which  rise  out  of  the  Black  Mountains, 
on  the  plateau's  southern  boundary,  and  traverse  it 
completely  from  south  to  north,  uniting  nearly  in  its 
centre. 

A  careful  examination  of  the  best  Government 
maps  of  this  region  will  enable  the  reader  to  follow 
this  description,  and  get  an  idea  of  the  contour  of 
the  Laramie  mesa,  which  may  serve  as  the  key  to  all 
other  formations  of  the  kind,  including  the  Plains  of 
South  Pass  and  the  three  great  parks  south  of  Lara- 
mie. Upon  such  nodal  points  as  these,  all  the  internal 


222       THE  HEART  OF  THE  CONTINENT. 

river  systems  of  the  Continent  are  centred.  Their 
contour  and  position  are  the  important  facts  of  the 
range  to  the  theoretical,  the  all-important  ones  to  the 
practical  student  of  physical  geography. 

Big  and  Little  Laramie,  where  we  crossed  the  Plain, 
flow  nearly  parallel  and  about  fourteen  miles  apart. 
Their  width,  at  the  bridges  maintained  by  the  Over- 
land Route,  is  about  thirty  or  forty  yards.  Their 
banks,  but  especially  those  of  the  latter  branch,  are 
enameled  with  flowers  of  a  brilliancy  unequaled,  but 
of  titles  unknown  in  my  experience.  One  variety 
was  a  scarlet  vivid  as  flame,  and  at  a  distance  resem- 
bled a  salvia.  The  leguminacece  were  represented  by 
several  plants  bearing  the  richest  mauve  and  purple 
blossoms ;  besides  which  I  noticed  some  flowers  seem- 
ingly allied  to  the  larkspur,  of  a  deep-blue  shade,  and 
sparingly  interspersed  among  the  profusion  of  the 
others.  The  sun  was  just  on  the  western  verge  of 
the  plateau  as  we  reached  Little  Laramie ;  and  the 
effect  of  his  level  rays  upon  the  exquisite  cool  ver- 
dure of  the  grass,  with  all  these  brilliant  flowers 
dashed  in  for  the  high  tones,  was  something  out  of 
which  to  manufacture  peaceful  memories  for  a  life- 
time. 

During  the  next  seventeen  miles  the  ground  grad- 
ually grew  less  even ;  but  the  general  characteristics 
of  the  plateau  were  preserved  until  twilight  gave 
way  to  starlight,  and  we  arrived  at  the  station  of 
Cooper's  Creek.  Here  the  moon  rose,  and  revealed 
to  us  one  of  the  loveliest  little  dells  in  all  the  Eocky 
Mountain  scenery.  Along  the  bottom  of  a  shallow 
depression  ran,  crystal-clear  and  icy  cold,  a  small 
stream,  rising  from  the  same  Black  range  as  the 
Laramie,  and  belonging  to  one  of  three  classes  which 


INTO   THE  ROCKY  MOUNTAINS.  223 

abound  in  this  immediate  vicinity :  the  streams  which 
lose  themselves  upon  the  Plain  in  "  sinks,"  or  lakes 
without  outlet ;  those  which  penetrate  the  Black 
range  to  join  the  North  Platte  immediately;  and 
those  which  flow  thither  indirectly,  by  emptying  into 
Medicine  Bow.  For  these  three  systems,  the  terrace 
including  Cooper's  Creek  forms  a  nodal  point  on  the 
small  scale ;  to  which  of  them  the  creek  belongs,  I 
am  not  positive.  We  ate  our  supper  from  the  box  of 
private  stores,  sitting  dappled  with  the  moon-shadow 
of  the  luxuriant  cotton-woods  which  embowered  the 
creek;  and  listening  to  its  tuneful  gurgling,  or  watch- 
ing the  silver  flash  of  ripples  break  across  an  umber 
pool  of  shade,  we  could  have  forgotten  that  this  was 
not  the  end  of  our  wanderings. 

The  hoarse  "All  right!"  of  the  driver  startled  us 
from  our  lotus  margin.  We  had  a  great  deal  more 
before  us ;  so  we  arose  to  shake  the  crumbs  from  our 
beards,  and  the  romance  from  our  souls.  We  turned 
back  one  lingering  glance  at  the  paradise  of  Laramie 
Plains.  Far  off  we  heard  the  shrill  yelp  of  the  coyote ; 
and  as  far,  a  silver  spark  went  shooting  across  the 
shadow  of  a  grassy  terrace,  with  that  electric  swift- 
ness which  denotes  the  antelope.  The  whole  great 
level  was  powdered  with  silvery  mist.  The  moonlight 
seemed  to  lie  on  the  nearer  grass  in  silvery  globules. 
Moonlight  was  .tangled  into  the  texture  of  the  gross- 
est things.  The  ragged  cotton-wood  bark  by  the 
creek  looked  like  strips  of  silver  foil;  the  bleak 
station-house  was  soaked  in  a  solution  of  romance, 
and  might  have  been  let  for  a  palace  to  Rasselas; 
there  was  antiquity  and  a  sort  of  Gothic  strength 
about  the  company's  stables ;  while  the  very  mules 
of  the  new  relay  seemed  touched  by  the  divinity  of 


224       THE  HEART  OF  THE  CONTINENT. 

the  hour,  and  became  hallowed,  or  moon-mellowed 
mules,  who  might  have  walked  into  the  traces  out  of 
some  old  Italian  "  Flight  into  Egypt,"  or  "  Adoration 
of  the  Magi." 

With  a  sigh  at  turning  our  backs  upon  this  lovely 
view,  we  drove  across  the  creek,  and  immediately 
entered  a  rolling  country.  The  transition  between 
the  general  level  of  Laramie  Plains  and  the  intri- 
cately convoluted  tract  just  west  of  Cooper's  Creek, 
is  almost  as  abrupt  as  the  threshold  of  a  door.  The 
simple  passage  of  a  stream  which  does  not  wet  our 
hubs,  takes  us  at  once  into  the  view  of  an  entirely 
new  type  of  landscape.  We  are  now,  strictly  speak- 
ing, out  of  the  Laramie  Plateau,  and  beginning  to 
ascend  toward  Elk  Mountain  and  the  head  of  Med- 
icine Bow,  by  the  foot-hills  of  the  range  including 
them.  We  were  entering  the  extremity  of  the 
Black  range,  which  had  imperceptibly  swung  round 
nearly  a  whole  quadrant  while  we  were  crossing  the 
Plains,  to  blend  with  the  Elk  Mountain  range  as  we 
ascended.  The  evening  had  been  bracing,  but  not 
unpleasantly  sharp,  upon  the  Plains.  Ascending  from 
an  elevation  of  eight  thousand  feet,  however,  a  man 
is  not  compelled  to  go  very  far  for  cold  weather.  We 
had  not  climbed  an  hour  among  the  gray,  cerebral 
convolutions  of  this  tract,  before  the  cold  became 
intense  enough,  not  only  for  overcoats,  but  for  all 
the  blankets  we  could  wrap  in.  I  was  quite  be- 
numbed upon  my  favorite  seat  at  the  driver's  side ; 
and  he  himself  suffered  severely  under  a  heavy-caped 
coachman's  coat  of  pilot-cloth,  his  fingers  aching  and 
stiffening  around  the  lines  inside  Indian  mittens  of 
thick  buckskin.  Yet  we  could  scarcely  have  chosen 
a  more  favorable  season  to  cross  the  range,  and  this 


INTO  THE   ROCKY  MOUNTAINS.  225 

was  one  of  the  pleasantest  nights  in  the  entire  year. 
I  expressed  to  the  driver  my  sincere  desire  that  I 
might  never  be  here  during  the  least  pleasant  ones, 
and  climbed  around  through  the  stage  door  into  the 
interior. 

It  was  early  daybreak  when  we  stopped  at  the  base 
of  the  great  Elk  Mountain.  The  air  was  perfectly 
clear,  and  so  intensely  cold  that  while  our  horses 
were  changing,  we  collected  the  dead  boughs  of  some 
stinted  cedars,  and  made  ourselves  a  jolly  camp-fire, 
at  which  we  simultaneously  warmed  our  benumbed 
bodies,  and  extracted  our  breakfast  coffee. 

Just  at  our  left  and  southernmost  hand  rose  the 
rugged  wedge  of  the  Elk  Mountain,  save  in  occa- 
sional reddish-gray  patches  of  protruding  granite, 
snow-clad  from  base  to  edge.  It  overtopped  our  own 
lofty  level  by  full  three  thousand  feet,  we  ourselves 
being  at  between  nine  thousand  and  ten  thousand 
feet  of  elevation. 

The  two  most  massive  mountains  which  I  saw  dur- 
ing my  entire  journey,  were  this  Elk  Mountain  and 
the  Old  Cheyenne,  guarding  the  south  approach  to 
Pike's  Peak.  There  are  higher  peaks,  but  no  nobler 
mountains  than  these  broad  masses  of  bald  or  snow- 
clad  rock,  with  a  general  trapezoidal  surface,  broken 
into  splendid  variations  of  light  and  shade,  and  hav- 
ing an  almost  horizontal  sky-line,  when  the  sunlight 
strikes  its  crest  of  eternal  ice,  defined  as  sharply  as  a 
razor's  edge. 

The  base  of  the  Elk  Mountain  is  surrounded  with 
forests,  consisting  of  all  the  mountain  species;  and  the 
water  from  its  snow  rivulets  keeps  the  herbage  fresh 
under  the  trees.  As  a  result,  game  has  always  been 
very  plenty  here,  the  Elk  Mountain  hunting-groundis 

15 


226      THE  HEART  OF  THE  CONTINENT. 

being  famous  alike  to  the  Indian  and  the  white  man, 
who,  by  struggles  not  a  few,  have  tested  their  relative 
rights  of  entry  upon  the  domain.  The  animals  which 
gave  the  mountain  its  name  were  abundant  at  this 
season,  and  the  Colorado  deer  and  antelope  no  less 
so.  We  had  frequent  opportunities  to  try  the  meat 
of  all  these  animals,  and  found  elk-meat  a  translation 
of  venison  into  the  vulgar  dialect,  while  antelope  was 
venison's  apotheosis. 

After  leaving  the  Elk  Mountain,  we  continued  dur- 
ing the  entire  morning  to  traverse  one  of  these  desert 
plateaus,  which  are  characteristic  of  the  Kocky  Moun- 
tain system,  and  to  which  I  have  already  referred  in 
the  itinerary  of  the  day  before  we  reached  Laramie 
Plains.  It  consisted  of  a  series  of  terraces,  casually 
mistakable  for  an  effect  of  wind-blown  sand,  had  not 
occasional  ledges  of  trap  shown  that  all  belonged  to 
one  system  of  elevation,  and  that  where  the  sand  had 
heaped  the  rock  out  of  sight,  the  dikes  still  kept  their 
strike  uniform.  For  ten  miles  the  plateau  was  mainly 
covered  with  sand.  Through  this  here  and  there  pro- 
jected a  columnar  mass,  or  a  curious  series  of  trape- 
zoids,  arranged  stair-fashion ;  but  its  general  effect  was 
that  of  a  level  ash-bed,  in  which  throve  the  pale  saf- 
fron blossoms  of  the  palmate  cacti,  and  the  delicate 
pink  cactus  flower,  like  a  baby's  finger-tips  seen  in 
sunlight,  which  grows  on  a  globular  body  like  an  aris- 
tocratic artichoke.  Add  to  the  inventory  of  vegetable 
life  an  occasional  whorl  of  gramma-grass,  a  scattering 
of  dwarfed  wormwoods,  a  patch  of  grease-wood  here 
and  there,  and  a  variety  of  those  pale-leaved  plants, 
covered  with  a  soft  sessile  down,  which,  all  over  the 
barrenest  tracts  east  of  Salt  Lake,  cling  to  the  ground 
so  close  that  frequently  they  are  not  distinguished 
from  it  by  the  traveller. 


INTO  THE   ROCKY  MOUNTAINS.  227 

For  the  first  time  on  our  journey,  I  found,  crawling 
among  the  cactuses  and  sand-heaps  of  this  plateau, 
that  singular  little  animal,  known  vulgarly  as  the 
Texan  Toad,  or  Horned  Frog,  though  in  reality  he 
does  not  belong  to  the  family  of  the  Ranidae  at  all,  but 
is  a  nearer  relation  to  the  lizards  and  salamanders. 
The  range  of  this  animal  is  singularly  eccentric.  On 
the  baked,  droughty  prairies  of  Texas,  it  is  found  un- 
der a  semi-tropical  sun;  travellers  have  met  with  it  as 
high  north  as  the  Sweetwater,  and  indeed,  for  aught 
I  know,  it  may  exist  on  many  of  the  sand-plains  be- 
tween the  South  Pass  and  the  Dalles  of  the  Columbia ; 
and  frequent  specimens  of  it  are  met  with  on  the  way 
between  Julesberg  and  Fort  Laramie,  along  the  North 
Platte  trail.  This  plateau,  however,  was  the  only  tract 
on  which  we  found  them  during  our  present  expedi- 
tion. At  a  height  at  least  equal  to  that  of  Laramie 
Plains,  surrounded  visibly  on  almost  all  sides  by  snow- 
peaks,  and  itself  snowed  under  for  several  months  of 
the  year,  this  waste  still  supports  an  animal  whose 
type  resembles  those  of  the  torrid  rather  than  the 
temperate  zone.  The  only  condition  on  which  he 
seems  inclined  to  stickle  is  aridity ;  put  him  where 
there  is  apparently  nothing  for  him  to  live  on,  and 
temperature  is  a  secondary  matter. 

These  "  toads  "  have  an  earthy  brown  back,  which 
is  broader  and  natter  than  that  of  the  true  garden 
reptile ;  a  white  belly ;  a  small,  twinkling  black  eye, 
not  all  ugly  or  malicious  in  its  expression,  and  set 
in  an  almond-shaped  slit,  which  in  some  of  the  older 
animals  is  inclosed  by  two  dark  lines  of  the  same 
shape.  This  has  an  effect  to  enlarge  the  eye  as  if  it^ 
had  been  penciled,  and  give  it  a  soft  look  like  that 
of  a  miniature  sheep  or  antelope.  The  two  retro- 


228      THE  HEART  OF  THE  CONTINENT. 

* 

curved  horns  which  arise  out  of  the  bony  plate  above 
the  eyes,  add  still  more  to  this  odd  resemblance.  The 
skin  of  the  back,  and  the  long  stiff  tail,  instead  of 
being  warty  like  the  true  toad's  upper  surface,  are 
thickly  set  with  thorny  excrescences,  sharp  as  those 
of  a  rose,  and  nearly  as  hard.  That  of  the  belly  is  not  a 
soft  mucous  surface,  like  those  of  the  frog  and  toad, 
but  a  dry,  tough  tissue,  almost  horny  in  its  character, 
imbricated  with  exquisite  delicacy  in  minute  rectan- 
gular patterns,  that  give  the  little  creature  sufficient 
freedom  of  motion,  and  at  the  same  time  provide  him 
with  the  most  accurately  linked  and  fitted  of  breast- 
plates. What  all  this  panoply  is  for,  I  have  never 
learned.  The  rattlesnake  may  be  his  enemy ;  but,  if 
so,  toady  leaves  the  offensive  to  him.  The  little  ani- 
mal is  so  far  from  pugnacious,  that  he  submits  to  be- 
ing taken  into  the  hand ;  in  fact,  if  placed  on  it  right 
after  capture,  will  often  stand  there  without  an  at- 
tempt to  get  away ;  and  it  is  the  easiest  possible  thing 
to  catch  him  in  the  first  place,  his  gait,  over  the  loose 
sand  of  his  haunts,  not  exceeding  in  speed  that  of  a 
common  box-tortoise.  This,  by  the  way,  is  an  animal 
which  I  only  twice  saw  between  the  Missouri  and  Cal- 
ifornia :  once  on  the  road  between  Cottonwood  (at 
the  confluence  of  the  North  and  South  Platte)  and 
Fremont's  Spring  in  Nebraska ;  again  far  up  toward 
the  snow-range,  among  the  mines  back  of  Denver. 
Neither  of  these  differed  remarkably  from  our  com- 
monest Eastern  variety. 

Just  as  I  had  about  finished  my  naturalizing,  hav- 
ing a  handkerchief  full  of  lizards,  insects,  and  plants, 
and  a  pail  brimming  with  horned  toads,  the  area 
about  us  became  suddenly  still  more  sterile,  and 
within  a  few  hundred  yards  the  sand  plateau  gave 


INTO   THE  ROCKY  MOUNTAINS.  229 

way  to  one  of  almost  absolutely  bare  rock,  terraced 
or  escaladed  in  right  lines,  but  with  such  a  gradual 
descent  to  the  westward  that  our  road  in  most  places 
went  down  the  steps  easily  without  detour,  debris 
having  filled  in  the  sharpest  angles. 

Nowhere  do  I  recollect  seeing  a  more  colossal  land- 
scape of  desolation.  Both  my  artist-friend  and  I  rode 
through  it  for  a  long  way  silent,  because  we  were 
overawed. 

It  is  difficult  by  an  enumeration  of  details  so  to  de- 
scribe this  tract  as  to  give  any  adequate  notion  of  it 
to  a  reader  who  has  never  visited  the  scenery  char- 
acteristic of  rainless  plateaus  in  a  lofty  mountain  re- 
gion. 

Our  road  followed  the  lowest  indentations  of  the 
rocky  uplifts,  being  in  many  places  a  mere  wheel- 
scratch  on  their  surface;  and  thus  we  might  fancy 
ourselves  upon  a  street,  along  which  these  trap  struc- 
tures had  been  erected.  It  was  difficult  not  so  to 
fancy  when  we  noticed  the  remarkable  symmetry 
with  which  the  rocks  were  arranged.  They  mostly 
seemed  of  the  same  coarse  trap  variety  as  those  of  the 
Palisades,  with  an  occasional  streak  of  greenstone  or 
of  phonolite.  They  had  come  up  through  the  most 
curious  net-work  of  dikes,  in  which  the  strikes  crossed 
each  other  nearly  at  right  angles,  producing  a  four- 
square arrangement  of  masses  which  reminded  one 
forcibly  of  architecture  and  city  blocks.  But  neither 
a  city  nor  an  architecture  that  was  human.  Many 
single  blocks  of  trachyte,  standing  isolated  to  mark 
the  corner  of  a  square,  were  fifty  feet  cube,  and  as 
regular  as  if  they  had  been  chiseled.  In  other  site 
nations  I  saw  numerous  series  of  tabular  masses, 
arranged  like  a  flight  of  stone  steps  each  ten  feet 


230       THE  HEART  OF  THE  CONTINENT. 

or  more  in  height,  and  in  all  running  to  a  height  of 
at  least  a  hundred  feet.  In  still  other  places  the 
uplifts  have  split  perpendicularly,  leaving  fragments 
of  a  flat  rectangular  form,  standing  like  the  rugged 
tomb-stones  of  a  giant's  burial-ground,  to  the  height 
of  from  twenty  to  a  hundred  feet. 

As  we  penetrated  further  into  this  tract,  the  archi- 
tectural appearances  became  so  consistent,  that  one's 
fancy  was  compelled  to  construct  a  theory  for  itself, 
and  did  it  very  rationally  to  the  effect  that  we  were 
travelling  through  a  deserted  city  of  the  conquered 
Titans.  Those  colossal  square  inclosures  were  the 
wine  cellars  and  treasure-vaults  of  palaces  thousands 
of  feet  high.  In  those  acres  of  basement  what  vast 
wassail  may  have  been  held  on  the  return  of  the  mas- 
ters from  hunting  megatheria,  fishing  for  icthyosauri, 
or  playing  quoits  with  cross-slices  off  a  volcano ! 
That  mighty  cube  of  black  fire-rock,  which  weighs  a 
thousand  tons,  was  but  one  of  a  single  course  of  stones 
in  the  same  rectangle,  upon  whose  foundation  the  now 
down- tumbled  house  was  built  —  high  as  the  eaves  of 
a  tall  city  house  itself,  but  only  at  the  bottom  of  a 
structure  whose  roof  menaced  the  gods. 

The  ruined  staircases  to  which  I  have  referred,  often 
stood  alone  in  such  relative  position  to  the  basement 
rectangles  that  it  required  no  stretch  of  the  imagina- 
tion to  conceive  of  them  as  the  former  access  to  the 
grand  front  entrance  of  the  house  —  an  appearance 
with  which  their  dimensions  were  equally  consistent. 
In  several  instances  I  noticed  that  the  interior  of  the 
rectangles  was  paved  in  square  blocks,  with  a  regular- 
ity, which  would  lead  any  one  ignorant  of  the  scientific 
means  to  suppose  that  the  area  had  been  flagged  by 
human  labor,  and  presented  the  appearance  of  some 


INTO   THE  ROCKY  MOUNTAINS.  231 

fortress  court-yard.  Nothing  could  be  at  once  more 
characteristically  sepulchral  and  Titanic  than  the 
spaces  occupied  by  the  tablets.  Some  of  these  were 
erect  as  I  have  described,  but  many  lay  on  corner 
blocks,  like  the  horizontal  grave-stones  of  old-fash- 
ioned country  church-yards.  Here,  stretched  many 
a  rood  under  the  torrid  sand,  with  prickly  cactuses 
springing  out  of  their  brains,  and  wormwood  out  of 
their  hearts,  may  lie  the  great  warriors  who  fell  on 
this  same  blasted  heath  in  battle  with  Olympus.  But 
they  are  no  more  silent  than  are  the  old  lords  of  the 
palace  who  fell  under  the  powdered-  ruins,  the  base- 
ment stones  of  which  alone  remain  for  witness,  be- 
ing lightened  upon  by  Zeus  Keraunios,  and  shot  into 
the  abyss,  in  the  very  ripeness  of  blasphemy,  wassail, 
and  defiance. 

However  forced  this  fancy  may  appear  to  the  cool 
reader,  it  irresistibly  suggested  itself  on  the  spot. 
The  shapes  and  sizes  of  all  the  rocks  within  view 
contributed  such  consistent  aid  to  this  idea,  that  I 
travelled  with  a  sense  of  delightful  awe,  as  if  I  were 
exploring  the  gigantic  remains  of  some  dead  civiliza- 
tion,— a  Layard  of  the  Titans.  It  would  hardly  have 
surprised  me  to  find  a  hierographical  inscription  cut 
upon  some  corner-stone  in  letters  a  cubit  deep. 

About  one  p.  M.  we  caught  sight  of  a  silvery  streak 
in  a  valley  about  fifteen  hundred  feet  below  our  pres- 
ent terrace.  This  we  soon  found  to  be  the  North 
Platte  Eiver,  whose  mature  stream  we  had  left  at 
Latham,  and  whose  upper  waters  we  were  now  about 
to  cross  at  no  great  distance  from  their  source.  By 
consulting  a  United  States  Survey  map,  it  will  be 
seen  that  this  stream  doubles  on  itself  remarkably, 
rising  just  outside  the  southern  wall  of  the  mountain 


232      THE  HEART  OF  THE  CONTINENT. 

quadrilateral  which  incloses  Laramie  Plains,  following 
the  outer  edge  of  the  terraces  which  bound  the  level 
westerly,  and  reaching  the  Plains  by  an  eastward  re- 
turn which  brings  it  within  a  comparatively  short 
distance  northerly  from  the  cradle  where  it  sprung. 

We  now  emerged  from  the  gradually  terraced  dikes, 
and  came  to  a  place  where  the  descent  was  so  precip- 
itous, that  sitting  on  a  coach-box  one  might  well  feel 
anxious  about  tumbling  forward  on  the  horses.  Our 
road  ran  on  bare  cracked  boulders  of  trap  and  altered 
sandstone ;  threaded  black  fissures ;  and  slid,  with  the 
brake  hard  on,  down  slippery  stone  inclines,  just  over 
the  edge  of  whose  narrow  shelf  was  a  sheer  precipice 
or  overhanging  wall  of  trachyte,  two  or  three  hun- 
dred feet  high. 

We  marked  the  first  appearance  of  the  Platte,  far 
to  the  south,  in  the  fold  of  a  system  of  round  gray 
hills,  which,  as  nearly  as  could  be  judged  from  their 
contour,  belonged  to  that  incoherent  granite  forma- 
tion weathered  into  spherical  forms,  which  I  men- 
tioned at  Virginia  Dale.  The  stream  passed  out  of 
view  to  the  northeastward,  through  a  precipitous 
canon  of  red  sandstone,  having  frequent  shelves  and 
butments  which  projected  several  feet  from  the  main 
wall,  and  averaging  perhaps  forty  or  fifty  feet  in 
height  from  the  water-line.  Its  course  traversed 
nearly  the  whole  of  our  western  horizon,  being  much 
of  the  way  distinguishable  from  our  elevation,  by 
glimpses  of  silvery  water  or  fringes  of  the  always 
indicative  cotton-wood.  The  round  hills  which  close 
by  at  Virginia  Dale  had  seemed,  both  in  form  and 
color,  the  convolutions  of  some  petrified  brain,  now 
softened  by  distance,  and  having  their  gramma  and 
sage-brush  lighted  by  the  intensest  sun,  looked  like  a 


INTO  THE  ROCKY  MOUNTAINS.  233 

flock  of  Cyclop  sheep,  whose  woolly  backs  were 
rounded  for  slumber  as  they  lay  down  beside  the 
still  waters  of  the  Platte.  Each  glimpse  of  those 
waters  the  sun  was  now  turning  into  a  pool  of  silver 
fire. 

Just  as  we  rounded  a  steep  jutting  bastion  of  trap, 
which  threw  us  a  little  further  towards  the  outer 
precipice,  I  turned  away  from  the  beautiful  valley 
view  to  look  upward  at  those  grim  crags  and  ter- 
races, by  whose  staircase  we  were  descending  to  the 
Platte.  I  had  looked  just  in  time,  for  my  point  of 
view  was  exactly  right  for  the  recognition  of  one  of 
the  greatest  mimetic  wonders  I  ever  saw,  even  in  this 
most  Titanic  and  Demoniacal  country. 

The  terrace  of  the  Giants'  Graveyard,  now  left  be- 
hind about  five  hundred  feet  above  us,  was  perceived 
to  have  an  extension  far  to  the  southward  and  west- 
ward of  the  point  where  we  came  down  from  it,  until, 
a  mile  in  front  of  our  present  niche,  it  projected  a 
bold  promontory  into  the  valley,  beyond  the  face  of 
the  entire  remaining  precipice,  and  at  least  a  hundred 
feet  higher.  The  lower  and  much  the  larger  part  of 
this  promontory  was  perpendicular,  or  overhanging; 
but  the  upper  end  of  it,  for  three  hundred  feet,  was 
weathered  into  a  colossal  sculpture,  a  head  and  bust 
of  such  striking  sharpness  and  vigor,  that  it  seemed 
almost  as  impossible  that  no  human  artist  had  had  a 
hand  in  the  work  as  it  was  inconceivable  how  he 
could  have  accomplished  it. 

Behind  this  promontory,  up  to  the  occiput  of  the 
sculptured  head,  ran  the  wall  of  a  principal  trap 
dike ;  and  further  behind,  overtopping  the  wall  in  a 
series  of  ascending  towers  and  bastions,  rose  a  vast 
pile  of  the  same  tremendous  cubes,  which  constituted 


234  THE  HEART  OF  THE  CONTINENT. 

the  foundations  of  the  ruined  palaces.  It  was  an 
easy  thing  to  imagine  loopholes  in  that  climbing  city 
of  strongholds ;  to  see  a  spectral  flag  wave  from  the 
highest  rampart ;  to  wonder  at  the  structure's  grand, 
simple  lines,  as  if  we  were  criticising  some  splendid 
piece  of  military  architecture ;  to  delight  in  its  idea 
as  if  Nature  shared  your  humanity. 

Braced  against  the  westward  wall  of  this  Titanic 
fortress,  and  looking  across  the  drowsy  flock  of  hills 
shepherded  by  the  silver  crook  of  the  Platte,  —  due 
west  across  the  green  oasis  which,  on  the  river  mar- 
gin, hundreds  of  feet  below,  awaited  us  with  trees, 
grass,  springs,  and  dinner, —  solemn,  stern,  and  satur- 
nine, looked  forth  the  face  of  John  Calvin. 

If  a  sculptor  had  undertaken  to  copy  in  stone  the 
best  known  likenesses  of  this  noted  theologian,  the 
result  could  not  have  been  a  more  striking  portrait. 
Any  person  familiar  with  the  picture,  would  most 
instantly  have  seen  it  in  this  head  and  bust.  Even 
to  the  traditional  Genevese  cap,  this  was  the  theolo- 
gian's second  self.  If  Presbyterians  ever  adopt  the 
usage  of  a  Mecca,  this  is  the  site  for  that  Mecca. 
Here  sits  the  Prophet,  bearing  witness  forever ;  and 
his  darkened,  painful  face  shows  that  the  Natural 
Depravity  whereof  he  testified  in  Geneva,  has  not 
gone  out  of  fashion  since  he  left  that  pulpit.  Look- 
ing westward,  round  the  globe,  he  sees  plenty  to  de- 
range his  moral  liver ;  and  because  those  rocky  lips 
have  no  voice  to  utter  warning,  he  sends  it  across 
the  valley  in  a  form  of  stone.  From  the  point  where 
I  stood,  I  could  see  hardly  a  place  on  head,  cap,  or 
face,  which  could  have  been  bettered,  as  likeness, 
by  a  more  elaborate  bringing  out  of  details.  The 
simulation  was  perfect,  and  for  nearly  half  a  mile 


INTO  THE  ROCKY  MOUNTAINS.  235 

continued  so,  with  varying  expressions  of  wrath  or 
sternness,  from  every  point  of  view. 

Finally  emerging  from  the  terrace  region,  we  came 
out  upon  the  green  and  shady  Platte  bottom,  which 
we  had  seen  just  below  us  for  the  last  hour,  and 
stopped  at  the  ferry-station  for  our  dinner. 


CHAPTER  VI. 

THE  APPROACH  TO   SALT  LAKE   CITY. 

WE  crossed  the  North  Platte  by  an  ingenious  con- 
trivance which  I  here  saw  for  the  first  time,  though 
I  cannot  but  think  that  some  time  or  other  it  must 
have  been  employed  upon  many  of  our  narrow  East- 
ern streams,  at  places  too  deep  and  rapid  for  fording. 
This  is  a  ferry-boat  whose  motive  power  was  the  cur- 
rent it  had  to  cross.  I  venture  to  believe  many  of 
my  readers  as  ignorant  as  I  found  myself,  and  en- 
deavor to  give  some  idea  of  this  ingenious  contriv- 
ance. 

A  stout  post,  square-hewn  from  an  entire  trunk, 
about  eighteen  inches  in  diameter,  is  driven  firmly 
into  each  of  the  opposite  bluffs,  and  between  the  two, 
tautened  by  a  windlass,  extends  a  heavy  hempen  ca- 
ble, roven  through  a  pair  of  lignum-vitse  double- 
blocks,  of  sufficient  breadth  of  eye  and  depth  of 
groove  to  run  without  friction  and  quite  independ- 
ent of  each  other,  from  post  to  post.  The  lowest  sag 
of  the  cable,  just  over  midstream,  brings  it  within 
eight  or  ten  feet  of  the  water-level.  So  much  for  the 
locomotive  apparatus. 

The  ferry-boat  is  a  rough,  strongly  built  scow,  with 
standing  room  for  a  four-in-hand  team  and  as  many 
passengers  as  choose  to  wedge  themselves  in  between 
horses  and  piles  of  baggage,  —  a  craft  apparently  of 
ten  or  twelve  tons  burden.  At  each  of  its  square  ends 


THE   APPEOACH  TO   SALT  LAKE   CITY.  237 

an  iron  ring-bolt  is  securely  screwed  into  the  keelson, 
and  to  each  ring  a  double  pulley-block  is  attached  by 
a  hook.  Through  each  of  these  blocks  a  stout  line 
runs  to  the  lower  wheel ,  of  the  corresponding  block 
on  the  cable  which  spans  the  stream,  reeves  through 
it,  and,  returning  inboard,  passes  around  the  second 
pulley  of  the  block  hooked  to  the  ring-bolt  to  the 
hand  of  the  ferryman,  or  a  convenient  cleat,  where 
he  fastens  it  with  a  half-hitch.  By  substituting  the 
cable  for  a  boom,  a  sloop's  main-sheet  may  be  made  to 
give  a  correct  idea  of  this  apparatus  and  its  modus 
operandi.  When  the  two  sheets  are  of  equal  length, 
the  current  strikes  the  side  of  the  scow  at  right  an- 
gles and  it  remains  stationary.  To  set  it  in  motion, 
it  is  only  necessary  to  close-haul  the  sheet  at  that  end 
of  the  scow  which  is  intended  for  the  bow  pro  tern- 
pore,  and  slacken  the  one  at  the  other  end.  The  cur- 
rent now  performs  the  function  discharged  by  a  wind 
a-beam  in  the  case  of  sailing  vessels,  and  takes  the 
ferry-boat  across  very  cleverly. 

The  ferryman  was  a  fine-looking  solitary,  who  spent 
months  at  a  time  camped  out  under  the  cotton-woods 
of  the  margin  without  seeing  a  face  except  that  of  the 
emigrant  or  the  traveller,  yet  lived  in  great  comfort 
and  contentedness  in  what  might  be  called  the  most 
out-of-the-way  spot  on  the  Northern  Continent.  His 
calling  was  certainly  of  the  most  valuable  character 
to  his  fellow-men,  and  equally  so  to  himself;  amount- 
ing to  a  monopoly  of  the  entire  transit  business  on 
the  most  important  trail  between  the  Missouri  and 
California.  He  could  not  fail  to  make  a  fine  income, 
charging,  I  believe,  two  dollars  a  team  for  all  ordinary 
ferriage,  and  having  a  private  arrangement  with  Mr. 
Holladay. 


238      THE  HEART  OF  THE  CONTINENT. 

I  left  this  place  with  much  regret,  having  a  strong 
desire  to  explore  the  mountains  south  of  us,  from 
which  the  river  issued,  and  between  which  for  many 
miles,  in  the  exquisitely  clear  atmosphere,  we  could 
catch  glimpses  of  it  in  its  silvery  and  sinuous  course. 
Indeed,  a  month's  stay  there  would  not  have  been 
thrown  away,  either  for  purposes  of  art  or  science ; 
the  trap  dikes,  heretofore  mentioned,  being  of  the 
most  interesting  character,  and  the  fauna  and  flora 
of  the  region  tempting  one  by  their  marked  indi- 
viduality. I  am  not  aware  of  a  more  favorable 
place  for  a  depot  camp  of  Rocky  Mountain  explorers 
than  this  ferriage.  Among  the  attractions  from  which 
I  broke  in  continuing  my  journey,  were  the  "  horned 
toads  "  of  the  rocky  plateau,  and  a  species  of  "  fish 
with,  legs  "  which  had  been  seen  in  the  small  streams 
emptying  into  the  Platte  not  far  from  here.  I  suf- 
fered the  frequent  fate  of  specimen  gatherers  in  the 
Rocky  Mountains,  and  lost  every  horned  toad  I  had 
collected.  The  scientific  student,  after  a  few  weeks' 
experience  in  a  country  where  transportation  is  so 
difficult,  learns  to  expect  that  much  of  his  material 
will  get  destroyed  or  left  behind,  even  where  he  has 
taken  the  most  particular  pains  to  collect  and  preserve 
it,  and  meets  his  disappointments  with  cool  philoso- 
phy; but  this  particular  case  of  my  own  was  greatly 
aggravated  by  being  not  the  result  of  chance  but  of  a 
stupid  retaliation  on  the  part  of  a  fellow-passenger, 
who  secreted  the  box  in  which  I  had  placed  my  speci- 
mens while  we  were  ferrying  across  our  luggage,  and 
opened  it  on  the  west  bank  of  the  Platte,  letting  all 
my  morning's  collection  escape.  When  it  became  too 
late  to  make  the  loss  good,  the  stage  having  started, 
I  was  informed  of  the  proceeding  as  a  capital  joke, 


THE   APPROACH  TO   SALT  LAKE   CITY.  239 

If  my  toads  shall  establish  a  colony  on  the  west  bank, 
for  the  convenience  of  future  collectors,  I  shall  not 
so  much  regret  my  own  disappointment.  I  regretted 
it  at  the  time  all  the  more,  because  one  or  two  of  the 
animals  appeared  to  me  a  different  species  from  any 
of  the  Phrynosomata  I  have  ever  seen  described ;  in 
their  general  figure  resembling  P.  Douglassii,  and 
their  heads  being  decidedly  like  that  of  P.  Cornu- 
tum.  At  several  places  in  the  mountains  I  sought  for 
the  "  fish  with  legs,"  which  almost  every  old  moun- 
taineer has  seen,  but  for  none  of  which,  as  a  matter 
of  course,  can  anything  be  obtained  like  a  scientific 
description.  Whenever  we  stopped  near  a  small 
stream  to  water  or  change  horses,  I  spent  all  the 
available  time  in  looking  for  him,  but  regret  to  say 
that  fortune  never  favored  me.  I  suppose  the  animal 
to  be  a  species  of  Siredon.  I  need  not  explain  to  the 
student  of  natural  history  my  anxiety  to  obtain  a 
fresh  specimen, — perhaps  even  a  new  species,  of  a 
genus  thus  far  represented  in  cabinets  by  but  two 
or  three  species  and  very  few  individuals,  even  these 
inadequate  relics  being  imperfectly  preserved. 

The  animal  to  which  Baird  has  given  the  specific 
name  of  Lichenoides  is  one  of  the  most  beautiful  and 
interesting  of  reptiles ;  having  the  head  without  the 
horns  of  the  cat-fish,  and  a  respiratory  apparatus 
consisting  of  three  branchial  flaps  on  each  side  of  the 
neck,  fringed  more  delicately  than  the  gills  of  any 
fish ;  and  owing  its  special  designation  to  the  yellow 
spots  distributed  over  the  black  or  brown  ground  of 
its  skin,  like  the  variegations  caused  by  lichens  on  the 
surface  of  a  stone. 

At  Sage  Creek,  an  inconsiderable  but  unfailing  riv- 
ulet, fed  from  the  snow-peaks,  and  about  fourteen 


240  THE  HEART   OF  THE   CONTINENT. 

miles  from  the  North  Platte  crossing,  we  met  for  the 
first  time  the  bird  most  characteristic  of  the  intra- 
montane  levels  and  western  slope  of  the  Rocky  Range 
—  the  Sage-cock. 

This  bird  may  well  be  called  the  king  of  the  grouse 
tribe.  His  own  average  length  is  about  thirty-two 
inches,  and  his  hen's  two  feet ;  but  I  have  seen  speci- 
mens which  exceed  these  measurements  by  several 
inches.  When  stalking  erect  through  the  sage,  they 
seem  as  large  as  a  good  sized  wild  turkey.  Their  color 
and  markings  differ  to  some  extent  with  age,  sex,  the 
season  of  the  year,  and  the  different  individuals ;  but 
the  prevailing  appearance  is  that  of  a  yellowish  brown, 
or  a  warm  gray  mottled  with  darker  brown,  shading 
from  cinnamon  to  jet  black,  the  dark  spots  laid  on 
in  longitudinal  series  of  crescents.  Their  under  parts 
are  of  a  light  gray,  —  sometimes  of  almost  a  pure 
white  tint,  —  barred  by  slender  longitudinal,  streaks 
of  brown,  —  the  middle  of  the  belly  being  pied  with 
black  patches.  Their  plumage  is  exquisitely  smooth ; 
the  feathers  of  a  handsome  cock  lying  so  close  and 
kept  in  such  perfect  order,  that  under  a  bright  sun  he 
looks  more  like  a  bird  encased  in  some  beautifully 
grained  and  polished  veneering  than  one  in  the  usual 
cloak  of  feathers.  The  elegance  of  his  figure  ex- 
ceeds that  of  any  grouse  on  the  Continent.  He  is 
slenderer  and  finer  in  his  outlines  than  any  allied 
bird,  except  the  Chinese  or  golden  pheasant.  In  rec- 
ognition of  his  resemblance  to  these  birds  he  gets 
one  of  his  numerous  aliases, — Tetrao  (Bonaparte),  or 
Centrocercus  (Swainson)  Urophasianus.  This  last  and 
specific  title  etymologists  will  recognize  as  Greek  for 
"  pheasant- tailed."  This  tail  of  his  seems  to  have  puz- 
zled ornithologists  somewhat  as  to  the  place  where  he 


THE   APPROACH  TO   SALT  LAKE  CITY.          241 

belongs.  It  differs  from  that  of  the  grouse  family  in 
general,  by  coming  to  a  point  instead  of  flaring  in  a 
fan ;  and  some  of  his  sponsors  have  made  a  new  species 
for  him,  taking  him  out  of  the  Tetraonidse  and  calling 
him  Centrocercus,  which,  in  connection  with  his  specific 
title,  certainly  amounts  to  a  pleonasm,  the  word  be- 
ing derived  from  the  Greek  xevrpov  (a  point)  and  x£p- 
xog  (a  tail),  so  that  the  translation  of  Swainson's  no- 
menclature would  be  "The  Pheasant-tailed  Point-tail." 
The  better  view  still  keeps  the  bird  a  Tetrao.  On 
each  side  of  his  neck  he  has  a  bare  orange-colored 
spot,  and  near  it  a  downy  epaulet,  which  allies  him 
as  nearly  to  the  ruffed  grouse  as  his  tail  to  the  pheas- 
ant. His  call  is  a  rapid  "  cut-cut-cut,"  followed  by  a 
hollow  blowing  sound ;  he  has  the  partridge's  habit 
of  drumming  with  his  wings ;  his  female  knows  the 
trick  of  misleading  the  enemy  from  her  young  brood ; 
and  although  his  curves  are  much  longer  and  his  fig- 
ure less  stocky  than  that  of  the  grouse  tribe  in  gen- 
eral, his  affiliations  on  the  whole  seem  stronger  in 
that  direction  than  in  any  other.  He  seldom  rises 
from  the  ground,  and  his  occasional  flights  are  low, 
short,  and  labored ;  but  he  runs  with  rapidity,  and  in 
his  favorite  habitat,  the  sage  brush,  dodges  and  skulks 
with  great  dexterity,  favored  by  the  resemblance  be- 
tween his  own  and  the  bushes'  neutral  tints.  His 
common  title  of  sage-cock  is  derived  from  his  favorite 
haunt.  Another  of  his  aliases  is  "  Cock  of  the  Plains," 
but  I  never  knew  him  so  called  out  of  books,  for  the 
title  is  not  descriptive.  He  is  never  seen  on  the 
Plains  proper  —  the  high  mountain  region,  whether 
level  or  sloping,  swarming  with  his  family  wherever 
sage  is  plenty,  from  the  vicinity  of  the  Kocky  Moun- 
tain water-shed  westerly  to  the  Desert,  and  several 

16 


242       THE  HEART  OF  THE  CONTINENT. 

hundred  miles  further  west  in  the  latitude  of  the 
South  Pass,  where  he  extends  as  far  as  the  cataracts 
of  the  Columbia.  In  that  region  the  sage  brush  has 
a  much  further  westerly  extension  than  further  south, 
—  and  the  bird  peculiarly  belongs  to  this  growth  of 
vegetation.  Thus  far,  to  my  knowledge,  he  has  never 
been  found  west  of  the  Cascade  Range  or  the  Sierra 
Nevada.  In  the  spring,  or  about  the  time  of  snow 
melting,  which  of  course  varies  at  different  heights 
and  in  different  latitudes,  the  sage-hen  builds  in  the 
bush  her  nest  of  sticks  and  reeds,  quite  artistically 
matted  together,  and  lays  from  a  dozen  to  twenty  eggs, 
a  trifle  larger  than  the  average  of  the  domestic  fowl, 
of  a  tawny  color,  irregularly  marked  with  chocolate 
blotches  on  the  larger  end.  Her  period  of  incubation 
does  not,  I  believe,  differ  much  from  that  of  the  do- 
mestic hen.  When  the  brood  is  large  enough  to 
travel,  its  parents  lead  it  into  general  society.  In 
July  and  August  the  flocks  begin  assembling,  and  by 
fall  it  is  not  unusual  to  meet  bands  of  two  or  three 
hundred.  I  reached  and  crossed  their  habitat  during 
the  last  week  in  June,  and  between  Sage  Creek  and 
Salt  Lake  daily  encountered  flocks  of  a  score  or  over. 
I  know  scarcely  any  animal  whose  range  is  more 
sharply  defined.  It  is  a  rare  thing  to  meet  with  them 
on  the  eastern  flanks  of  the  ridges  belonging  to  the 
Eocky  Mountain  system ;  though  while  I  was  in 
Denver,  my  friend,  the  indefatigable  naturalist  Dr. 
Wernigk,  brought  back  from  an  expedition  into 
the  South  Park  very  fine  specimens  of  both  cock 
and  hen.  This  fact,  however,  hardly  constitutes  an 
exception  to  the  general  rule,  since  South  Park 
is  but  little  over  a  degree  further  east  than  Sage 
Creek,  and  sheds  a  portion  of  its  water  to  the  west 


THE  APPROACH   TO   SALT  LAKE  CITY.  243 

by  small  affluents  of  the  Grand  Fork  of  Colorado, 
though  most  of  its  drainage  is  by  the  South  Platte. 

I  never  saw  tamer  wild  fowl  than  the  little  troop  of 
sage-chickens  which  we  encountered  on  striking  Sage 
Creek.  I  could  hardly  realize  they  were  what  they 
were,  though  I  had  a  vividly  correct  image  of  them 
in  my  mind  from  the  stuffed  specimens  of  Dr.  Wer- 
nigk,  and  the  admirable  drawings  of  Baird's  collec- 
tion. As  we  wound  along  the  brook  margin,  they 
strutted  complacently  between  the  gnarled  trunks 
and  ashen  masses  of  foliage  peculiar  to  the  sage,  pay- 
ing scarcely  more  attention  to  us  than  a  barn-yard 
drove  of  turkeys  (whose  motion  theirs  much  resem- 
bles), the  cocks  now  and  then  stopping  to  play  the 
dandy  before  their  more  Quakerish  little  hens,  in- 
flating the  yellow  patches  of  skin  on  each  side  of 
their  necks,  by  a  peculiar  air-syphon  apparatus,  until 
they  globed  out  like  the  pouches  of  a  pouter  pigeon. 
As  this  was  the  first  time  I  had  seen  them  in  their 
native  haunts,  and  because  their  confidence  quite 
disarmed  me,  I  had  no  thought  of  shooting  them, 
and  had  the  driver  slow  his  team  to  give  our  party 
a  better  opportunity  of  studying  them.  They  con- 
tinued dodging  about  the  bushes  not  more  than  forty 
feet  from  us,  until  we  thoroughly  familiarized  our- 
selves with  their  manners ;  and  acknowledged  that 
although  some  others  of  the  grouse  tribe  rejoiced  in 
richer  colors  than  they,  they  certainly  bore  away  the 
palm  in  the  exquisite  symmetry  of  their  markings, 
and  the  grace  of  their  figures  as  well  as  their  move- 
ments. Wishing  to  get  nearer  them  for  the  purpose 
of  seeing  if  any  young  ones  were  concealed  in  the 
brush  (whose  trunks,  consisting  each  of  a  number  of 
smaller  stems  united  in  a  spiral  twisted  as  tight  as 


244       THE  HEART  OF  THE  CONTINENT. 

any  hawser,  here  measured  everywhere  the  thickness 
of  a  man's  thigh),  I  dismounted  and  quietly  crept 
toward  them.  They  did  not  take  the  alarm  until  I 
had  got  within  twenty  feet  of  them,  and  then  went 
under  cover  with  an  air  of  dignified  leisure.  I  sup- 
pose they  knew  by  instinct  that  they  had  little  to 
fear.  Science  and  wantonness  were  their  only  ene- 
mies. I  had  their  whole  country  before  me,  and 
would  not  burden  myself  with  specimens  prema- 
turely ;  I  was  not  fond  of  destroying  life  merely  for 
murder's  sake,  and  none  of  our  party  were  starving. 
To  kill  a  sage-hen  for  supper  demands  either  this  last 
condition,  or  the  stomach  of  an  Indian ;  for,  with  this 
handsome  grouse,  beauty  is  preeminently  but  skin 
deep, —  the  flesh  of  the  bird,  save  in  the  youngest 
chickens,  being  a  mess  rather  for  the  apothecary's 
shop  than  the  kitchen.  The  sage -fowl  not  only  live 
in  the  brush  from  which  they  get  their  name,  but  feed 
on  it,  as  well  as  on  the  insects  and  smaller  reptiles 
about  its  roots,  thus  acquiring  a  rank  sage  flavor 
which  repeated  parboilings  followed  by  roasting  can- 
not entirely  eradicate.  The  wild  sage  has  no  connec- 
tion with  our  garden  variety,  except  through  its 
popular  name  and  very  unpopular  taste,  being,  in 
fact,  a  wormwood  (Artemisia  tridentata),  while  our  fa- 
miliar pot-herb  is  the  Salvia  officinaUs. 

Sage  Creek  runs  nearly  due  north  and  empties  into 
a  small  nameless  stream,  which  is  the  most  westerly 
affluent  of  the  North  Platte,  and  which  rises  from  the 
very  summit  of  the  water-shed  penetrated  by  Bridg- 
er's  Pass.  After  leaving  Sage  Creek  we  crossed  two 
more  anonymous  rivulets  which  go  to  swell  this  afflu- 
ent, on  the  way  stopping  at  Pine  Grove  Station, 
twenty-four  miles  from  the  North  Platte  Crossing,  to 
change  horses. 


THE   APPROACH  TO   SALT  LAKE   CITY.          245 

Here  we  found,  in  the  person  of  the  station-keeper, 
one  of  the  finest  specimens  of  the  American  hunter 
and  fearless  pioneer  encountered  in  our  whole  jour- 
ney. He  was  a  splendidly  built  fellow,  not  more  than 
twenty-two  or  three  years  old,  six  feet  high,  with  an 
arm  like  a  grizzly's  paw,  a  fine,  frank,  fearless  face,  full 
of  ruddy  health  and  quenchless  cheerfulness.  There 
was  a  look  of  capability  and  resource  about  him  which 
made  it  easy  to  understand  how  the  wilds  of  our  coun- 
try are  settled,  its  rocky  fastnesses  made  to  roar  with 
the  blast  of  the  forge,  and  echo  to  the  sound  of 
axe  and  hammer.  Set  him  beside  one  of  our  pale, 
puny  Metropolitan  counter-jumpers,  and  ask  the  in- 
habitant of  another  planet  to  label  the  two  for  the 
shelves  of  some  anthropological  cabinet :  ten  to  one 
they  would  not  be  included  in  the  same  species,  per- 
haps not  in  the  same  genus  of  animal  life.  The 
young  station-keeper  told  us  that  he  had  a  partner, 
but  it  was  very  rare  for  both  of  them  to  be  at  home 
together.  He  had  now  been  alone  for  several  days, 
taking  care  of  the  stock,  while  the  other  man  was 
trapping  and  shooting  equally  alone  in  the  moun- 
tains. When  we  asked  him  what  game  he  hunted,  he 
invited  us  into  his  cabin  and  pointed  us  to  the  walls 
for  the  shortest  answer.  The  skins  hung  so  thick 
that  we  could  not  see  the  logs.  Among  them  were 
a  number  of  full-sized  grizzly  robes,  and  a  few  pretty 
little  cub-skins,  very  soft  and  silky,  belonging  to  the 
same  species ;  a  cinnamon  bear-skin,  besides  gray  and 
white  wolf-skins,  fox-skins,  deer-hides,  and  smaller 
peltry  without  stint,  including  the  wolverine,  an  ex- 
quisitely marked  tiger-cat,  and  the  robe  of  a  moun- 
tain lion.  His  cabinet  of  deer  and  elk  horns  would 
have  brought  hundreds  of  dollars,  if  offered  to  an 


246       THE  HEART  OF  THE  CONTINENT. 

Eastern  sportsman  decorating  his  library.  His  taste 
in  adornment  was  excellent ;  the  lady-love  of  a  prince 
might  have  envied  him  his  boudoir.  All  his  skins 
were  in  excellent  preservation.  The  only  one  that 
he  had  never  been  able  to  preserve  was  that  of  the 
antelope;  and  that  animal  must  forever  baffle  the 
cabinet  collector,  for  his  hair  differs  from  that  of  every 
quadruped  but  the  porcupine.  It  is  stiff  and  spongy; 
the  gentlest  pull  brings  out  a  bunch  of  it  in  one's 
fingers,  and  this  bunch  looks  and  feels  like  a  bundle 
of  short  threads  of  spun  glass.  Where  it  is  thickest, 
on  the  breast  and  about  the  haunches,  it  stands  out 
like  bristles  radiating  from  a  centre  in  the  brush 
form,  with  concentric  rings  of  coarse,  brittle  fibre 
arranged  round  it.  I  have  never  seen  anything  ex- 
actly like  it  in  any  other  animal,  and  never  in  the 
antelope  anything  like  the  other  ruminants'  wool  or 
hair.  The  fibres  of  the  antelope  pelt  are  sometimes 
so  brittle  that  they  break  across  as  easily  as  the  spun 
glass  which  they  resemble.  The  skin  is  thus  value- 
less for  the  fur  trade  or  the  cabinet,  a  fact  which  I 
have  often  regretted;  for  its  appearance  upon  the 
animal,  with  the  sunlight  striking  its  tawny  ground 
and  snow-white  patches,  as  it  goes  glancing  down  a 
bluff  in  the  arrow-flight  of  a  stampede,  is  very  beau- 
tiful. 

Among  other  trophies  which  interested  me  greatly, 
were  the  horns  and  skin  of  a  "  Bighorn,"  or  Kocky 
Mountain  sheep  ( Ovis  Montana),  an  animal  which  even 
in  the  heart  of  this  savage  region  is  practically  rare, 
since,  like  the  chamois,  it  frequents  the  most  inac- 
cessible fastnesses,  and  is  never  seen  save  by  the 
hunter  who  devotes  himself  entirely  to  its  pursuit. 
The  wariest  Indian  often  lies  in  wait  for  it  for  days 


THE   APPROACH   TO   SALT  LAKE    CITY.         247 

without  seeing  it,  and  when  finally  he  does  catch  a 
glimpse  of  it,  it  only  reveals  itself  on  the  brink  of 
some  snow-covered  crag  hundreds  of  feet  above  him, 
where  neither  ball  nor  arrow  could  strike,  and  no 
living  being  but  its  own  kind  could  reach  it  without 
wings.  Its  color  is  a  grayish  brown,  like  that  of  a 
ram  in  a  dusty,  droughty  summer  just  before  "  sheep- 
washing  "  time,  with  a  darker  line  down  the  spine, 
after  the  ass's  fashion.  Its  horns  (as  one  of  the  pop- 
ular names  indicates)  are  immense.  Some  of  the  old 
hunters  told  me  that  a  pair,  with  the  clean  skull, 
*  sometimes  weighed  sixty  pounds,  but  I  have  never 
found  any  actual  authentic  weight  exceeding  half 
that.  The  horns,  like  those  of  the  antelope,  are 
rooted  so  immediately  above  the  orbital  process  that 
they  seem  to  rise  directly  out  of  the  eyes.  They  are 
almost  close  together  at  the  base,  where  it  is  not 
unusual  to  find  them  measuring  twenty  inches  in 
circumference.  They  curve  gradually  and  evenly 
backward  in  an  arc  of  about  two  hundred  degrees, 
and  to  a  length  of  thirty  to  forty  inches,  their  tips 
being  about  half  their  length  apart  from  each  other. 
Their  hoofs  are  generally  black,  and  unlike  the  ante- 
lopes' are  provided  with  the  dew-claw,  or  upper  and 
posterior  rudimentary  hoof  common  to  the  allied  gen- 
era. Their  hair  is  less  brittle  than  the  antelopes', 
and  in  winter  is  interspersed  with  a  short,  fine  fleece, 
apparent  on  parting  the  straight  fibres;  but  they 
have  nothing  that  in  the  least  approaches  the  wool 
of  our  domestic  sheep.  The  animal  is  of  immense 
size,  the  adults  weighing  between  three  and  four 
hundred  pounds.  I  have  heard  from  old  hunters  and 
Indians,  that  when  surprised  upon  a  precipice  where 
there  is  no  room  to  turn,  the  bighorn  will  plunge 


248      THE  HEART  OF  THE  CONTINENT. 

headlong  a  distance  of  a  hundred  feet,  and  strike  on 
his  horns  without  breaking  them  or  bruising  him- 
self, then  bound  to  his  feet  by  aid  of  their  elastic 
spring,  and  run  away  as  if  nothing  had  happened.  I 
cannot  vouch  for  this  story,  since  our  party  had  no 
time  to  make  a  protracted  halt  at  the  great  altitude 
which  is  the  favorite  and  almost  only  habitat  of  the 
bighorn.  Indeed,  I  must  confess  to  never  having 
seen  him  alive ;  but  I  have  found  the  hunters  of  this 
country  more  strictly  and  conscientiously  accurate  in 
regard  to  facts,  than  any  class  of  men  from  whom  I 
have  ever  sought  information.  The  theories  by 
which  they  explain  their  facts  have  no  more  value 
than  attaches  .to  those  of  uneducated  men  anywhere, 
being,  of  course,  frequently  in  diametrical  opposition 
to  established  principles  of  science,  and  arising  from 
a  confusion  of  concomitant  circumstances  with  the 
idea  of  cause  and  effect.  But  their  report  of  matters 
lying  wholly  within  experience  is  more  trustworthy 
than  that  of  the  best  educated  savant,  their  eyes, 
ears,  and  all  their  senses  being  trained  to  a  vigilant 
keenness  which  nothing  escapes,  and  their  freedom 
from  superstition  (a  constant  element  of  error  in  in- 
formation given  by  the  wildwoodsmen  of  other  na- 
tions) securing  them  from  the  danger  of  mystical 
exaggeration.  I  believe  I  have  before  referred  to  an 
instance  of  this  in  the  notion  of  prairie-dogs,  owls,  and 
snakes  all  inhabiting  the  same  burrow.  I  was  per- 
petually assured  by  plain,  practical  frontiersmen  that 
the  notion  was  a  correct  one,  and  after  putting  the 
question  to  repeated  careful  tests,  discovered  that 
they  were  right  and  the  savant  was  wrong.  So  I  can 
conceive  it  possible  that  the  Rocky  Mountain  sheep 
does  dive  headlong  from  precipices  and  break  his  fall 


THE   APPROACH   TO    SALT  LAKE  CITY.          249 

by  a  pair  of  horns  for  whose  magnificent  spiral  curves 
and  immense  size  there  can  scarcely  be  imagined  any 
other,  and  certainly  no  better  use.  But  it  needs  an 
enthusiast  indeed  to  study  an  animal  who  keeps  his 
admirers  a  week  at  the  perpetual  snow-line  before 
vouchsafing  them  so  much  as  a  glimpse  of  him. 

The  young  station-keeper's  cabin  was  not  far  from 
that  altitude.  It  was  situated  on  a  narrow  shelf  of 
one  of  the  highest  ranges,  in  a  dense  grove  of  firs  and 
pines,  and  built  of  nicely  hewn  logs,  cut  close  at  hand. 
When  we  consider  that,  with  the  exception  of  this 
timber  which  made  his  dwelling,  and  the  water  which 
trickled  from  the  adjacent  snow-peaks  for  his  drink, 
every  necessary  of  life  both  for  his  horses,  his  partner, 
and  himself,  had  to  be  brought  to  this  solitary  crest 
of  the  Continent  all  the  way  from  the  Missouri  River 
(nine  hundred  and  thirteen  miles)  by  wagon,  we  may 
form  some  proximate  idea  of  the  indomitable  energy 
required  of  the  man,  who,  like  Ben  Holladay,  could 
keep  in  steady  running  order  a  daily  freight  and  pas- 
senger line  across  the  entire  Continent.  A  hitch  in 
the  machinery  of  this  vast  system,  occurring  in  the 
stables  or  granaries  of  this  station,  packed  away  as  it 
is  in  the  loneliest  recesses  of  the  world's  topmost 
ridge, — the  furthest-off*  place,  so  to  speak,  that  mortal 
can  imagine, — anything  awry  here  may  throw  out 
of  gear  important  interests  and  arrangements  in  St. 
Louis  or  San  Francisco.  But  things  did  not  go  awry ; 
for  one  single  tireless  man,  with  the  finest  talent  for 
business  combinations  that  exists  in  America,  was  for- 
ever dropping  into  cabins  under  the  snow-peaks  and 
adobes  sweltering  on  the  sand  of  the  desert ;  making 
the  master's  eye  felt  by  the  very  horses ;  creating  a 
belief  in  his  omnipresence,  and  a  sense  that  it  was 


250      THE  HEART  OF  THE  CONTINENT. 

worth  while  to  be  worthy  of  his  confidence ;  he  was 
found  in  every  part  of  the  vast  machinery  whose  steam 
lay  in  his  audacious  force  of  character,  and  whose  gov- 
ernor consisted  of  his  unrivaled  business  tact.  Just 
before  I  left  New  York  I  saw  him  at  an  artists'  re- 
ception at  Dodworth's.  I  ask  the  Pine  Grove  hermit 
if  he  ever  saw  Mr.  Holladay.  "  You  bet ! "  replies 
my  hermit ;  "  he  was  here  day  before  yesterday." 

With  the  exception  of  the  abrupt  descent  made  by 
us  from  the  plateau  of  the  remarkable  trap  dikes, 
down  the  terraces  where  John  Calvin  frowns  in  eter- 
nal petrifaction  to  the  last  crossing  of  the  Platte,  we 
had  been  climbing  steadily  to  this  cabin,  from  the 
sunset  which  saw  us  over  the  lesser  fork  of  Laramie 
and  the  moonlight  which  made  silver  filagree  of  the 
splash  from  our  horses'  hoofs  as  we  forded  Cooper's 
Creek.  We  were  now,  by  the  most  reasonable  esti- 
mate, at  an  altitude  of  more  than  ten  thousand  feet. 
Our  calculations  were  corroborated  by  the  character 
of  the  surrounding  vegetation.  We  had  parted  from 
cotton-woods  on  the  western  verge  of  Laramie  Plains. 
Then  the  osiers  left  us,  and  the  dry  Artemisia  fringed 
the  snow-cold  rivulets  that  traversed  our  trail  —  com- 
ing, with  the  grease  wood,  clear  down  to  the  margin 
where  at  less  elevations  we  might  have  looked  for  a 
swaying  willowy  fringe.  Now,  at  Pine  Grove,  decidu- 
ous vegetation  failed  almost  entirely.  The  hardiest 
of  the  succulent-leaved  trees  gave  way  to  that  sturdy 
growth  which  is  separated  only  by  the  moss  and  the 
lichen  from  absolute  barrenness.  We  saw  no  longer 
the  "  quaking-asp  "  (Populus  tremubides)  nor  the  canon 
maple  (Acer  macrophyllum^  var.  Utahensef).  Here  was 
the  kingdom  of  the  Coniferae,  and  even  these  were 
stinted.  Around  the  young  hunter's  and  station- 


THE   APPROACH  TO   SALT  LAKE   CITY.  251 

keeper's  cabin,  the  funereal  foliage  of  spruce,  and  fir, 
and  pine,  attained  a  growth  of  but  forty  or  fifty  feet, 
though  dense  enough  to  add  a  strange  solemnity  to 
the  obscure  loneliness  of  this  lofty  mountain  crest. 

Emerging  from  the  black  shadows  of  the  pines,  we 
came  into  a  tract  whose  colossal  wildness  of  scenery 
stands  apart  in  my  recollection,  by  virtue  of  the  same 
class  of  traits  which  isolate  certain  lonely  and  severe 
human  characters. 

In  no  one  particular  was  it  measured  on  so  vast  a 
scale  as  certain  other  savage  landscapes  I  have  vis- 
ited. But  its  toute  ensemble  was  that  of  utter,  unbroken 
solitude.  We  hardly  needed  the  information  vouch- 
safed us  by  the  driver,  that  we  were  now  crossing  the 
dividing  ridge  between  the  Atlantic  and  Pacific  — 
the  great  water-shed  of  the  Rocky  Mountains. 

Even  after  my  long  experience  of  the  breadth  of  the 
range,  I  was  not  fully  prepared  to  find  this  ridge  so 
unostentatious  of  its  true  character.  True,  I  had  not 
expected  when  I  reached  it  to  see,  as  from  the  sum- 
mit range  of  our  narrow  Alleghanies,  the  bird's-eye 
view  of  either  slope  and  the  plains  below  mottled  with 
cloud  and  sunshine,  and  arabesqued  in  every  direction 
by  the  silver  threads  of  rivers  belonging  to  the  two 
systems  of  drainage ;  but  neither,  on  the  other  hand, 
had  I  looked  for  such  a  complete  absence  of  all  the 
distinctive  traits  proper  to  that  idea  of  a  moun- 
tain chain  and  water-shed  which  we  get  from  maps 
and  charts  of  physical  geography. 

We  were  completely  shut  in  by  a  chaos  of  moun- 
tains. Our  track  kept  the  summit  of  a  sinuous  di- 
vide, for  the  most  part  narrow  as  a  railway  embank- 
ment, save  where  it  inosculated  with  other  like  ridges, 
coming,  seemingly  without  system  of  distribution, 


252       THE  HEART  OF  THE  CONTINENT. 

from  every  direction,  and  separated  by  deep  gullies, 
pits,  and  trenches,  bare  of  all  vegetation,  save  here 
and  there  a  scanty  tuft  of  bunch  grass,  which  seemed 
rather  to  have  been  calked  into  the  dry  seams  of  the 
soilless  granite  than  to  grow  out  of  them.  Our  divide 
possibly  varied  from  a  few  hundred  to  a  thousand 
feet  in  height  above  the  holes  and  chasms;  while  on 
either  hand,  looking  in  that  crystal  atmosphere  of 
the  upper  world  but  a  stone's  cast  off,  and  in  reality 
at  a  distance  to  be  measured  by  miles,  the  transverse 
convolutions  of  the  range  (those  in  fact  which  give 
propriety  to  its  name  of  a  "chain  ")  rose  two  or  three 
thousand  feet  higher  still.  These  cross  ranges  were 
very  precipitous,  ascending,  without  regard  to  the  ir- 
regular glacis  of  detritus  at  their  base,  at  an  angle  of 
60°  to  70°,  seamed  with  mighty  scars  where  the  frost 
had  toppled  over  and  slid  off  acre-large  fragments  of 
their  battlements,  furrowing  their  naked  flanks  all  the 
way  down — bare  of  all  vegetation  even  in  these 
channels — bare  even  of  soil,  until  the  eye  paused  just 
below  their  perpetual  snow-line  on  a  slender  rim, 
green  as  emerald,  fed  by  the  meltings  from  above.  It 
was  almost  midsummer, — a  week  after  the  solstice, — 
yet  in  many  scars  the  snow  lay  uninterrupted  from 
crest  to  base ;  and  along  the  whole  irregular  line  of 
the  ridges  it  was  the  packed  accumulation  of  num- 
berless years,  solidified  to  the  consistency  of  a  glacier, 
and  wearing  that  peculiar  pearl-blue  or  opalescent 
tint  belonging  to  that  formation.  On  the  average 
the  snow-line  of  these  transverse  ridges  was  drawn 
about  a  fifth  of  the  distance  downward  from  their 
crest,  and  the  emerald  band  which  ran  almost  exactly 
parallel,  ranged  half  that  distance  further  down  the 
declivity.  Below  that,  and  in  all  directions  around  us, 


THE  APPROACH  TO  SALT  LAKE   CITY.  253 

the  congeries  of  mountains  and  lesser  divides  were 
bare  as  the  pavement  of  a  city,  a  quarry,  or  the  driest 
thing  known  either  to  nature  or  to  art.  The  prevail- 
ing color  on  the  heights  was  a  dull  reddish  brown; 
in  the  pits  and  chasms,  a  leaden  gray.  Up  in  the  em- 
erald band  was  ice-cold  water  and  succulent  pastur- 
age for  the  bighorn  ;  thither  must  his  hunter  climb ; 
there,  freezing  through  long  nights  when  the  mer- 
cury fell  to  zero,  must  he  wait  patiently ;  there  must 
he  watch  for  days,  with  no  food  but  a  strip  of  jerked 
buffalo;  thence  might  he  never  return  at  all,  his 
hunter,  the  grizzly  or  the  cougar,  having  "  gobbled  " 
him  unaware;  or  returning,  have  nought  to  bring 
down  with  him  but  a  set  of  frozen  toes  and  the  hu- 
miliating experience  of  a  long-range  shot  at  some 
Ulysses  among  rams,  who  had  jumped  a  chasm  with 
an  ounce  ball  in  his  shoulder,  and  gained  his  inacces- 
sible fastness  in  a  peak  a  thousand  feet  higher  yet. 

Just  beyond  the  water-shed  this  basin  of  moun- 
tains contracts  into  a  narrow  gallery,  walled  by  noble 
precipices  of  red  granite  and  metamorphic  sandstone, 
rising  directly  from  the  traveller's  side  to  the  almost 
perpendicular  height  of  from  a  thousand  to  twenty- 
five  hundred  feet.  In  some  places  this  gallery  ap- 
pears scarcely  more  than  a  crevice  of  dislocation,  a 
mere  crack  between  stupendous  naked  rocks  which 
would  match  joints  exactly  if  slid  back  to  their  old 
position.  In  no  part  of  it  does  the  resemblance  to  a 
work  of  engineering  art  cease  to  strike  one.  Though 
the  passage  is  in  reality  abundantly  ample  for  an 
army,  the  vast  height  of  its  lateral  walls  makes  it 
seem  proportionally  so  narrow  that  it  might  be  the 
rock-cut  of  some  bygone  race  of  road-builders.  This 
American  Simplon  is  Bridger's  Pass.  It  is  several  miles 


254       THE  HEART  OF  THE  CONTINENT. 

in  length,  and  has  a  main  westerly  direction  with  a 
slope  toward  the  same  point  of  compass.  It  is  quite 
sinuous,  but  nowhere  turns  so  abruptly  that  its  pas- 
sage is  difficult  to  a  four-horse  team,  nor  is  its  descent 
anywhere  so  sudden  as  to  be  liable  to  a  like  objec- 
tion. I  was  astonished  at  finding  the  art  of  the  en- 
gineer so  far  anticipated  for  the  purpose  of  a  con- 
venient transit  route  between  the  two  coasts  of  our 
country,  as  everywhere  appears  in  Bridger's  Pass.  It 
is  named  after  the  celebrated  explorer  and  trader, 
Major  James  Bridger,  who  was  either  its  first  white 
discoverer,  or  the  first  to  make  it  widely  known  as  a 
convenient  means  of  access  to  the  vast  interior  basin 
of  the  Continent.  He  came  to  this  region  nearly 
forty-five  years  ago,  and  during  much  of  the  period 
since  then,  remained  in  constant  relation  with  the  In- 
dian tribes  ranging  between  New  Mexico  and  the 
Great  South  Pass — including  those  of  the  Upper 
Missouri,  Green,  and  Columbia  Rivers.  He  had  estab- 
lished a  trading  post  and  an  important  depot  and 
resting  place  for  emigrants  to  California,  at  the  fort 
which  bears  his  name,  long  before'  it  became  a  mili- 
tary station  of  the  United  States  government. 

Just  at  the  western  portal  of  this  magnificent  gal- 
lery, and  at  a  depression  of  perhaps  fifteen  hundred 
feet  below  its  eastern  entrance,  we  emerged  into  an- 
other basin-shaped  valley,  walled  by  snow-crested 
ridges  like  those  surrounding  the  water-shed,  but  hav- 
ing a  luxuriant  green  bottom,  irrigated  by  rivulets 
from  the  meltings  above.  A  large  emigrant  train  had 
just  made  its  halt  there  for  the  night.  We  felt  an 
almost  bovine  sympathy  for  the  cattle,  who  were 
eagerly  browsing  up  to  their  bellies  in  the  rank  herb- 
age of  the  stream-margins.  It  was  half  an  hour  after 


THE   APPROACH  TO   SALT  LAKE   CITY.          255 

sunset,  and  the  horizon  towards  which  we  were  trav- 
elling was  flushed  with  a  clear  salmon  hue,  which 
contrasted  finely  with  the  dark  green  of  the  valley- 
bottom,  the  lighter  emerald  of  the  band  beneath  the 
snows  of  the  encircling  precipice,  and  the  third,  al- 
most black  shade  of  the  same  color,  manifested  by 
the  occasional  groups  of  stinted  evergreens,  which 
marked  the  base  of  the  slopes ;  while  a  still  livelier 
tone  was  infused  into  the  middle  ground  by  the  leap- 
ing jets  of  yellow  flame  which  rose  from  the  crackling 
sage  and  grease  wood  of  the  camp-fires  where  supper 
was  cooking  for  three  hundred  men,  women,  and  chil- 
dren, and,  as  it  flickered,  made  the  snow-white  tilts  of 
the  great  ox-wagons  seem  to  dance  and  waver,  go  and 
come,  like  cheerful  ghosts.  The  camp  was  full  of 
farm-yard  noises.  Cows  were  lowing  to  be  miked, 
and  suckling  calves  were  bleating  to  their  mothers ; 
a  wandering,  sniffing  pack  of  curs  were  yelping  at 
the  welcome  smell  of  supper  and  the  thought  of 
bones  in  reversion ;  and,  from  their  coops  slung  to 
the  backs  of  the  wagons,  side  by  side  with  that  cook- 
ing stove  and  hickory-bottomed  chair  which  are  the 
emigrant's  inevitable  Lares,  bewildered  hens  were 
clucking,  and  anachronistic  cocks  uttering  a  real 
break-o'-day  crow, — their  ideas  utterly  turned  topsy- 
turvey  by  the  inability  to  mark  time  with  the  proper 
roosting  pole,  and  the  mimicry  of  sunrise  by  the  flash 
of  camp-fires.  We  got  cheerful  nods  and  friendly 
greetings  as  we  trundled  through  the  camp,  and  came 
a  few  miles  further  on  to  our  own  supper  at  the 
Overland  station  of  Sulphur  Springs.  This  was  the 
most  elaborate  meal  we  had  enjoyed  for  some  time. 
Sitting  on  the  box  with  the  driver,  I  had  so  fascinated 
that  high  authority's  imagination  by  a  description  of 


256      THE  HEAKT  OF  THE  CONTINENT. 

the  canned  provisions  in  our  "  outfit/ '  that  he 
warmed  to  the  proposition  of  stopping  at  Sulphur 
until  I  could  prepare  "  a  good  square  meal."  The 
station-keeper  at  Sulphur  had  a  wife  and  a  baby.  We 
expressed  much  delight  at  this  joyful  sight,  —  by  no 
means  a  common  one  in  the  mountains  or  on  the 
Desert,  unless  on  an  emigrant  wagon  in  transitu, — and 
so  won  the  family  heart  that  we  were  admitted  to  all 
the  rights  and  privileges  of  the  cooking-stove.  Get- 
ting out  our  provision  box  from  under  our  feet  in  the 
wagon,  we  soon  had  employment  provided  for  every 
utensil  known  to  the  Sulphur  Springs  cuisine.  The 
sight  of  men  cooking  is  no  such  portent  in  the  Rocky 
Mountains  as  (unfortunately  for  health  and  good 
taste)  it  is  in  the  rural  districts  of  the  East ;  and  the 
mother  beamed  on  us  kindly  as  she  tended  the  baby 
with  one  arm  and  handed  us  condiments  with  the 
other,  all  with  such  dispatch  that  we  had  to  warn  her 
against  mistaking  hands  ih  her  excitement,  and 
throwing  the  baby  into  the  stewed  tomatoes  while 
she  dandled  the  pepper.  It  would  do  the  hearts  of 
our  Eastern  acquaintance  good  to  see  the  skilled  fin- 
gers which  had  composed  a  glacier  and  innumerable 
mountain  tops  equally  glib  in  hotter  preparations, 
where  the  spoon  was  substituted  for  the  paint  brush; 
laying  in  a  background  of  prepared  coffee,  and  grad- 
ually bringing  up  the  high-lights  with  an  inspired 
touch  of  condensed  cream ;  while  literary  fingers, 
gambolling  in  long  vacation  from  the  pen,  were  pre- 
paring an  article  on  the  theme  of  Shaker  sweet  corn, 
another  upon  canned  beef,  and  still  another  upon 
tomatoes,  the  whole  edition  of  the  work  containing 
these  to  be  absorbed  eagerly  as  soon  as  published. 
The  driver,  who  had  travelled  widely,  and  become 


THE  APPROACH  TO   SALT  LAKE  CITY.          257 

conversant  with  the  most  elaborate  cuisines  of  Denver 
and  Salt  Lake  City,  declared  that  even  in  those  luxu- 
rious capitals  this  "  outfit "  was  not  to  be  surpassed. 

After  tea,  while  the  fresh  horses  were  getting  at- 
tached, I  wandered  a  few  steps  away  from  the  back 
of  the  station  to  the  springs  which  gave  it  its  name. 
There  were  two  of  them,  side  by  side  —  one,  a  white 
sulphur,  of  strength  and  flavor  almost  exactly  resem- 
bling the  Clifton  water  .in  Ontario  County,  State  of 
New  York ;  the  other,  more  of  the  Kentucky  Blue 
Lick  type,  but  much  more  intense.  The  first  I  found 
very  agreeable.  I  felt  sorry  that  the  rest  of  the  party 
abhorred  all  such  springs  alike,  for  this  was  deliciously 
cold  and  limpid,  beside  being  free  from  the  saline  and 
alkaline  properties  which  were  to  make  most  of  the 
springs  henceforth,  until  we  reached  California,  nau- 
seous or  wholly  undrinkable.  Though  an  epicure  in 
the  matter  of  mineral  water,  being  very  fond  even  of 
Blue  Lick,  I  was  obliged  to  confess  that  I  could  not 
drink  the  second  spring.  It  was  fairly  saturated  with 
sulphide  of  hydrogen,  and  had  numerous  other  dis- 
tinguishable flavors  as  badly  intense,  none  of  which 
I  recognized  save  the  chalybeate. 

Shortly  after  we  left  Sulphur  Springs,  the  moon 
rose,  now  near  her  full.  As  long  as  I  could  keep  my 
eyes  open,  I  sat  on  the  box.  The  country  was  a 
congeries  of  bare  round  hills,  receding  and  rising  on 
either  hand  to  mountain  ranges,  transverse  to  that 
which  we  had  penetrated  at  Bridger's  Pass.  It  was 
difficult  to  imagine  that  we  were  still  in  the  very 
thick  of  the  mountain  system,  and  at  an  elevation  at 
least  as  high  as  Laramie  Plains.  The  stupendous 
scale  upon  which  this  system  is  constructed,  con- 
stantly prevents  the  traveller  from  realizing  where 


258       THE  HEART  OF  THE  CONTINENT. 

he  is.  Not  -till  he  has  climbed  over  many  ridges,  and 
penetrated  many  passes,  does  he  understand  that  his 
descent  over  the  one  or  his  emerging  from  the  other 
is  only  equivalent  to  the  entrance  upon  another  lofty 
plateau,  —  a  plain  raised  upon  the  very  summit  of  the 
mountains  themselves, — or  into  a  basin  formed  by  the 
inosculation  of  several  separate  mountain-crests.  The 
ridges  which  bound  the  plateau  or  the  basin  recede 
so  as  to  lose  their  prominence  in  the  landscape  ;  and 
until  one  reaches  the  spot  where  they  curve  together 
again,  or  encounters  some  new  range  which  forms  a 
boundary  to  the  comparative  level  he  has  been  trav- 
elling, he  might  easily  suppose  he  had  reached  a  low- 
land tract,  and  got  out  of  the  mountains  altogether. 
There  is  no  more  appropriate  name  for  the  Rocky 
Mountain  system  than  to  call  it  a  chain,  and  to  no 
other  mountain  system  is  the  term  equally  applicable. 
The  traveller  crossing  one  of  its  basins  or  plateaus  is 
inside  a  link  ;  a  break  in  one  of  these  links  is  a  pass 
or  canon.  As  he  goes  through  this  break,  he  enters 
another  link,  belonging  to  another  parallel  and  lower 
or  higher  series.  Not  until  he  descends  to  Salt  Lake 
City  through  that  tremendous  system  of  connecting 
canons  which  breaks  through  the  Wahsatch,  can  he 
say  that  he  has  crossed  the  Rocky  Mountains.  In 
some  places  along  the  system  one  line  of  links,  in 
some  others  all  but  one,  disappear  entirely ;  but  any- 
where on  the  United  States  line  between  New  Mexico 
and  the  Great  South  Pass,  the  interoceanic  traveller 
must  cross  a  parallel  series  of  them  amounting  to  a 
score  or  more.  One  of  these  links  is  sometimes 
found  to  be  constructed  of  a  single  line  of  upheaval, 
curving  from  its  very  origin ;  but  the  link  oftenest 
seems  to  have  been  constructed  by  two  separate  sets 


THE   APPROACH  TO   SALT  LAKE   CITY.  259 

of  uplifts,  operating  at  as  many  periods  of  disturbance  : 
one,  which  we  may  call  the  primary,  elevating  the 
axial  ranges  of  the  Continent,  whose  principal  trend  is 
north  and  south ;  and  the  other,  which  we  may  call 
the  secondary,  operating  subsequently  between  the 
parallel  lines  of  the  first  uplift,  with  a  general  trend 
at  right  angles  to  it.  The  first  upheaval  produced  a 
mountain  region  about  six  hundred  miles  wide  at  its 
widest  part,  with  lofty  valleys  between  its  highest 
ranges.  The  second  barred  these  valleys  at  intervals, 
turning  them  into  the  present  plateaus  or  basins,  and 
completing  the  link  formation  which  we  now  see. 

Though  not  entirely  limited  in  its  occurrence  to 
the  Rocky  Mountains,  this  formation  is  strikingly 
characteristic  of  that  system,  and  is  nowhere  else  so 
constant  a  trait  both  of  scenery  and  geology.  Upon 
its  existence  depend  the  most  important  results  to 
the  future  settlement  of  the  interior.  Wherever 
these  transverse  bars  occur,  it  will  instantly  appear 
that  the  ease  of  irrigating  the  levels  between  the  ax- 
ial ranges  is  vastly  enhanced.  Many  of  them  rise  to 
a  height  as  great  as  that  of  the  longitudinal  ranges; 
some  of  them  are  higher  than  those  in  their  imme- 
diate neighborhood.  They  condense  the  moisture  of 
the  upper  atmosphere  currents,  turn  it  into  snow,  and 
thus  become  reservoirs  of  irrigation  —  storehouses  of 
fertility  for  the  included  levels  below. 

Any  good  map  constructed  after  the  latest  surveys, 
but  the  maps  of  the  War  Department  especially,  will 
exhibit  the  link  formation  with  peculiar  clearness  in 
many  different  portions  of  the  range,  but  in  none 
more  strikingly  than  in  the  tract  lying  between  38° 
and  41°  lat.  N.  and  105°  and  107°  Ion.  W.  Within 
these  boundaries  lie  three  great  links,  whose  interior 


260       THE  HEART  OF  THE  CONTINENT. 

basins  possess  a  fertility  of  soil,  a  grandeur  and  beauty 
of  scenery,  and  a  loveliness  of  climate  which  fasci- 
nated explorers  long  before  the  discovery  of  the  pre- 
cious metals  allured  them  to  the  interior  of  the  Con- 
tinent, and  which  now  cause  them  to  be  better  known 
than  almost  any  part  6*f  the  Rocky  Mountain  system, 
save  that  in  the  immediate  vicinity  of  mines.  These 
go  by  the  titles  of  the  North,  Middle,  and  South 
Parks.  Their  isolation  from  each  other  is  almost 
complete ;  the  transverse  ridge  dividing  the  Middle 
from  the  South  Park  being  quite  impenetrable, 
while  a  water-shed  of  gentler  ascent  and  more  broken 
lines  separate  the  former  from  the  North  Park.  The 
resemblance  which  these  formations  bear  to  the  links 
of  a  chain  strike  one  instantly  on  looking  at  the  map. 
Not  less  striking  is  the  amount  of  water  shed  into 
each  of  the  inclosed  basins  from  the  snow-ridges 
which  form  its  rim.  The  amount  furnished  by  direct 
rain-falls  is  inconsiderable,  —  during  some  years  al- 
most literally  nothing,  —  and  may  be  left  out  of  the 
calculation.  North  Park  will  be  observed  to  possess 
a  system  of  irrigation  so  complete  and  so  bountiful 
that  art  could  scarcely  improve  it.  Innumerable 
tributaries,  shed  from  its  walls  in  every  direction, 
unite  to  make  the  North  Fork  of  Platte,  which  was 
separated  from  us  as  we  crossed  Laramie  Plains  only 
by  the  single  range  of  black  hills  on  our  left,  and 
which,  after  flowing  around  the  base  of  that  grand 
mesa  on  which  the  Laramie  Plains  lie,  makes  another 
grand  detour,  and  reaches  the  Great  Plain  at  Fort 
Laramie,  a  degree  further  north  than  where  we  left 
them.  Another  system  of  tributaries  combines  to 
the  southerly,  and  sheds  itself  through  a  break  in  the 
southwest  corner  of  the  link,  under  the  name  of  the 


THE  APPROACH  TO   SALT  LAKE   CITY.  261 

Blue  River  —  contributing  one  important  affluent  to 
that  mysterious  stream  which,  after  traversing  one  of 
the  least  known  and  most  savage  regions  of  the 
world,  finally  empties  itself  into  the  Gulf  of  Califor- 
nia under  the  title  of  the  Colorado  River.  A  short 
inspection  of  the  hydrography  of  this  region  will 
show  us  that  the  true  division  between  the  North 
and  Middle  Parks  occurs  in  the  line  of  the  water- 
shed between  the  tributaries  of  the  North  Platte  and 
those  of  the  Blue.  The  latter  river,  it  will  also  ap- 
pear, receives  the  entire  drainage  of  the  Middle  Park 
— an  amount  of  water  almost  wholly  derived  from  the 
snow-meltings  of  the  tremendous  ranges  inclosing  the 
park,  yet  equal  to  that  of  any  tract  of  corresponding 
area  under  the  moist  sky  of  our  Atlantic  slope.  The 
South  Park  gives  birth  to  the  South  Platte  and  the 
Arkansas  —  both  unfailing  streams,  though  they  re- 
ceive no  affluents  of  any  size  within  a  hundred  miles 
of  their  source.  The  Cache  la  Poudre  (through  whose 
pass,  it  will  be  recollected,  we  ascended  to  the  Laramie 
Plateau)  is  the  first  tributary  of  noticeable  volume 
belonging  to  the  South  Platte  ;  yet  the  latter  stream 
is  an  abundant  and  rapid  river  long  before  it  receives 
this  increment,  indeed  in  the  immediate  neighborhood 
of  Denver. 

Still  further  to  the  north  than  the  Parks  lie  two 
examples  of  the  link  formation  in  Laramie  Plains  and 
the  plateau  of  the  Great  South  Pass.  I  have  indi- 
cated, as  it  occurred  in  the  order  of  our  itinerary,  the 
longitudinal  and  transverse  ranges  which  environ  the 
former.  North  of  the  Wind  River  Mountains,  the 
transverse  range  which  forms  its  lower  boundary, 
lies  an  irregular  plateau  to  which  the  South  Pass 
furnishes  its  main  western  exit,  of  much  vaster  ex- 


262       THE  HEART  OF  THE  CONTINENT. 

tent  than  those  we  have  been  considering,  yet  belong- 
ing equally  with  them  to  the  link  system.  Within 
this  link  rise  the  Snake  Fork  of  the  Columbia  (or,  as 
we  may  properly  say,  the  Columbia  itself,  the  Snake 
deserving  the  honor  of  consideration  as  the  main 
stream),  the  Yellowstone,  and  the  Missouri.  This 
link  is  the  Delphi  of  our  Continent's  physical  geog- 
raphy, the  o[i<pa?iog  y^  since  from  it,  as  a  nodal  tract, 
flow  the  two  chief  streams  of  North  America,  the  one 
sending  its  waters  to  the  Gulf  of  Mexico,  the  other 
emptying  into  the  North  Pacific  Ocean ;  their  cradling 
fountains  separated  from  each  other  by  a  narrow 
ridge,  and  their  graves  in  the  all-swallowing  sea  dis- 
tant from  each  other  2,225  miles  in  an  air  line. 

The  link  formation  is  exhibited  everywhere  in  the 
Rocky  Mountains.  It  is  not  only  the  type  on  which 
has  been  constructed  every  great  tract  of  plateau  or 
basin  country  like  those  just  considered,  but  the 
traveller  is  constantly  finding  it  repeated  on  a  smaller 
or  even  a  miniature  scale.  Thus,  the  famous  gold- 
leads  of  Colorado  lie  environed  on  the  north  and 
south  sides  by  walls  belonging  to  the  transverse  sys- 
tem of  uplifts ;  their  west  boundary  is  the  giant  wall 
of  the  Middle  Park  itself;  from  the  west  side  of  this 
wall  flows  a  tributary  to  the  Blue  River,  the  Colo- 
rado, and  the  Gulf  of  California ;  from  its  eastern  face 
comes  Clear  Creek,  the  famous  stream  that,  after  sup- 
plying the  mines,  runs  to  the  Platte,  and  finally  reaches 
the  Gulf  of  Mexico :  the  springs  of  the  two  streams 
are  divided  by  a  single  snow  bank.  "  Ogden's  Hole  " 
is  a  tract  lying  in  similar  environment  among  uplifts 
of  the  Wahsatch,  differing  so  much  between  them- 
selves in  point  of  geological  period,  that  immediately 
adjoining  the  granite  and  sandstone  of  the  main 


THE   APPROACH  TO   SALT  LAKE   CITY.          263 

range  are  found  much  disturbed  strata  of  the  carbon- 
iferous series,  which  may  become  of  immense  value 
when  the  Pacific  Bailroad,  with  its  locomotives,  its  ma- 
chine-shops, and  the  increase  of  population  following 
in  its  wake,  shall  demand  and  justify  the  development 
of  Utah's  internal  resources. 

In  the  mutual  relations  of  the  longitudinal  and 
transverse  systems  of  uplift  lies  a  field  of  study  no 
less  important  than  interesting.  Their  relative  ages ; 
their  conterminous  points,  or,  where  such  cannot  be 
made  out,  their  tracts  of  transition  into  each  other; 
the  facts  as  to  the  existence  of  the  precious  metals  in 
both  or  in  one  only,  and  if  the  latter,  then  in  which 
one,  —  these  are  merely  passing  hints  for  a  line  of  in- 
vestigation which  cannot  fail  to  be  fruitful  of  most 
valuable  results. 

This  episode  upon  the  link  formation  has  its  close 
connection  with  our  itinerary,  though  I  seemed  to 
wander  away  from  it  just  after  leaving  Sulphur 
Springs. 

Descending  from  the  water-shed,  we  had  emerged 
through  the  magnificent  gallery  of  Bridger's  Pass  into 
a  tract  which  forms  another  link,  not  until  now  men- 
tioned by  me  as  such,  of  the  same  type  as  all  the 
others,  and  nearly  the  same  longitudinal  system  as 
that  of  the  South  Pass  plateau.  From  that  plateau 
we  were  now  divided  by  the  Wind  River  Mountains, 
and  their  continuation  on  a  smaller  scale  along  the 
Sweetwater.  This  transverse  range  formed  the  north- 
ern segment  of  our  link.  The  Uintah  range,  and  its 
continuations  along  the  line  of  the  Yampah,  formed 
a  corresponding  segment  on  the  south.  With  these 
the  Wahsatch  range  inosculated  on  the  west,  and  on 
the  east  the  parallel  longitudinal  range  which  we  had 


264       THE  HEART  OF  THE  CONTINENT. 

just  penetrated  by  way  of  Bridger's  Pass.  The  area 
thus  bounded  has  but  a  single  system  of  drainage :  it 
contains  the  source  of  the  Colorado,  and  every  drop 
of  its  water  goes  to  swell  that  stream. 

Fremont's  Peak  may  be  called  the  western  corner- 
stone of  the  wall  formed  by  the  Wind  River  Moun- 
tains along  the  south  boundary  of  the  South  Pass 
Plateau.  From  the  southern  base  of  this  corner- 
stone, and  thus  separated  only  by  a  single  range  from 
the  drainage  area  which  begets  the  Columbia,  the 
Missouri,  and  the  Yellowstone,  springs  another  river, 
as  remarkable  as  either  of  the  former  two,  and,  al- 
though lacking  their  commercial  importance,  destined 
to  traverse  an  extent  of  country  surpassed  by  the 
Missouri  alone  among  all  the  rivers  of  North  Amer- 
ica. This  stream  is  the  Rio  Colorado  of  the  Califor- 
nian  Gulf,  here  at  its  fountain-head  called  the  Green. 
From  its  springs  to  the  mingling  of  its  waters  with 
the  ocean,  the  distance  measured  in  an  air  line  is,  for 
the  Columbia,  650  miles ;  for  the  Colorado,  850 ;  and 
for  the  Missouri,  1,750  We  have  seen  that  the  short- 
est distance  between  the  Columbia's  and  the  Missou- 
ri's junction  with  the  sea  is  2,225  miles.  By  similar 
measurement  the  waters  of  the  Green  or  Colorado 
reach  the  sea  1,520  miles  from  those  of  the  Missouri, 
and  1,140  miles  from  those  of  the  Columbia.  Yet  it 
is  not  improbable  that  in  the  neighborhood  of  Fre- 
mont's Peak  (or  about  44°  lat.  N.  112°  Ion.  W.) 
there  exist,  upon  an  area  no  larger  than  an  ordinary 
Eastern  States'  county,  springs  contributing  to  each 
one  of  these  great  rivers.  It  will  be  evident  from  the 
extreme  tortuosity  of  all  three,  that  a  measurement 
made  "  as  the  crow  flies  "  gives  but  a  very  inadequate 
idea  of  their  length,  or  the  vast  surfaces  which  they 


THE   APPROACH  TO   SALT  LAKE   CITY.          265 

lay  under  contribution.  A  juster  conception  of  the 
Colorado  may  be  acquired  by  observing  that  not  only 
the  entire  area  within  this  mighty  link  now  surround- 
ing us,  but  nearly  the  whole  of  the  vast  territory  south- 
ward of  us  to  the  New  Mexican  line,  and  westward 
to  the  Sierra,  contributes  to  this  river  all  its  water, 
with  the  exception  of  such  streams  as  are  swallowed 
out  of  sight  by  the  "  sinks  "  of  the  thirsty  desert. 

During  the  night,  whenever  I  woke  with  a  jerk 
from  the  feverish  sleep  of  an  Overland  traveller,  I 
could  perceive  the  same  features  which  characterized 
the  landscape  soon  after  we  left  the  Sulphur  Springs. 
The  gray  woolly-looking  hills  lay  like  the  backs  of  a 
Cyclopean  flock  of  sheep  rounded  in  slumber  and 
huddled  as  far  as  the  eye  could  reach  under  a  misty 
moonlight.  Sometimes,  though  rarely,  a  wretched 
cedar,  the  victim  of  misplaced  confidence,  had  estab- 
lished itself  in  a  chink  to  struggle  for  life  with  sage 
brush  and  grease  wood;  but  these  latter  and  the 
gramma-grass  ruled  the  arid  region,  dressing  it  out 
in  one  broad  melancholy  Quaker  monotone  which 
even  the  moon  was  not  able  to  e-therealize.  The 
Florida  moss  is  exquisitely  beautiful  in  moonlight ; 
indeed,  when  it  festoons  a  circle  of  noble  old  live- 
oaks,  it  will  make  out  of  noonday  a  moonlight  of  its 
own  for  one  inside  the  pavilion,  by  filtering  the  yel- 
low glare  through  itself,  and  turning  it  to  silver ;  but 
there  one  has  at  least  some  bright  green  for  a  con- 
trast, and  the  moss,  moreover,  in  its  shape  is  graceful 
beyond  all  flattery.  Fancy  a  world  of  moss  and 
nothing  else  ;  fancy  that  moss  formed  like  a  dry  hay- 
cock stuck  raggedly  on  a  gnarled  stump  three  feet 
high ;  then  you  will  have  this  sage  brush,  and  a  land- 
scape which  Genius  itself  could  not  beautify. 


266      THE  HEART  OF  THE  CONTINENT. 

Fifty-one  miles  of  rolling  country,  broken  by  noth- 
ing remarkable  in  the  way  either  of  scene  or  adven- 
ture, brought  us  about  8  A.  M.  to  a  station  called  La 
Clede.  Upon  consulting  our  itinerary  we  found  that 
during  the  night  we  had  passed  our  half-way  mark 
between  the  Missouri  and  our  California  terminus  at 
Placerville.  For  the  benefit  of  future  travellers  I  will 
state  that  this  midway  point  occurred  just  half  a  mile 
west  of  the  Duck  Lake  Station.  We  were  now  983 
miles  from  our  journey's  beginning,  930  from  its  end, 
and  272  from  Salt  Lake  City. 

While  we  were  changing  horses  at  La  Clede,  we 
loaded  our  fowling-pieces,  and,  after  a  walk  of  some 
forty  rods  into  the  sage  brush,  succeeded  in  starting 
up  a  flock  of  sage-fowl,  and  bagged  three.  They  were 
in  fine  plump  condition,  but  we  had  no  desire  to  haz- 
ard the  experiment  of  roast  chicken  with  wormwood, 
even  had  there  been  time  to  stop  and  cook  our  game. 
Accordingly,  we  set  about  preserving  the  only  part 
valuable  to  science,  namely,  the  skins,  leaving  the 
meat  for  the  coyotes.  In  this  instance,  as  one  among 
many,  we  had  to  return  sincere  thanks  to  Ben  Holla- 
day  and  Mr.  Otis  his  superintendent,  for  the  kindness 
shown  us  by  an  extension  of  courtesies  in  general,  and 
an  open  letter  in  particular,  calling  on  the  drivers  to 
halt  half  an  hour  at  a  time  whenever  we  wished  it  to 
facilitate  our  scientific  examinations  and  notes,  the 
taking  of  sketches,  and  the  collection  and  preparation 
of  specimens.  By  the  time  our  leave  to  halt  was  ex- 
hausted we  had  succeeded  in  getting  a  clean  pair  of 
skins  (an  adult  cock  and  hen),  without  making  a  tear 
or  losing  a  feather.  Having  rubbed  them  thoroughly 
with  arsenical  soap,  we  folded  them  as  neatly  as  pos- 
sible, tied  them  up  in  an  India  rubber  bag,  and 


THE   APPROACH  TO    SALT  LAKE   CITY.          267 

stowed  them  under  our  seats,  where  they  rode  very 
comfortably  to  us  as  well  as  safely  to  themselves,  un- 
til we  reached  California.  The  air  of  the  Plains  and 
Mountains  is  so  dry  and  free  from  ozone  that  a  nicely 
cleaned  skin  would  run  but  little  risk  of  becoming 
offensive  even  without  the  soap ;  but  neither  'soap  nor 
India  rubber  demand  much  room;  and  when  a  speci- 
men is  as  rare  as  one  of  these  birds,  which  it  requires 
a  journey  into  the  very  heart  of  a  continent  to  get, 
every  precaution  should  be  taken.  Before  we  left 
Denver,  I  had  employed  a  rainy  afternoon  in  the 
manufacture  of  bags  for  the  preservation  of  delicate 
specimens,  both  botanical  and  zoological ;  using  the 
India  rubber  cloth  with  which  we  had  provided  our- 
selves in  New  York,  of  a  quality  used  for  the  lighter 
description  of  water-proof  capes,  and  in  quantity 
amounting  to  twelve  yards.  When  I  bought  it,  I 
feared  that  I  was  a  little  finical,  and  perhaps  resem- 
bled those  Cockney  travellers  who  take  marmalade 
and  folding  bath-tubs  with  them  across  the  Sahara ; 
but  in  fact  it  proved  one  of  the  most  remunerative 
purchases  of  our  outfit.  It  served  us  as  many  valu- 
able turns  as  it  does  citizens  who  tarry  at  home.  It 
rolled  into  very  small  compass,  scarcely  exceeding  an 
umbrella  in  bulk,  and  was  in  constant  requisition.  It 
covered  note-books  and  sketch-books  when  we  were 
fording  streams  which  splashed  us  from  head  to  foot ; 
it  made  excellent  surtouts  for  leather  rifle-covers; 
and  it  was  invaluable  as  an  air  and  water  tight  en- 
velope to  some  plants  which  are  equally  ruined  by 
soaking  or  desiccation.  Negatively  as  well  as  affirm- 
atively I  afterward  learned  how  to  appreciate  it, 
when  it  had  all  been  used  up,  and  I  was  compelled 
to  expose  one  of  the  most  gorgeous  collections  of 


268       THE  HEART  OF  THE  CONTINENT. 

Lepidoptera  I  ever  saw  in  any  cabinet  to  the  search- 
ing, dry  atmosphere  of  a  California  midsummer,  with 
no  protection  but  a  cedar  box ;  on  opening  which  I 
found  a  few  mummied  bodies,  minus  legs,  antennae, 
and  siphons,  together  with  a  little  heap  of  irridescent 
powder  to  represent  what  had  once  been  rainbow 
banners,  court-suits  for  the  pages  of  Queen  Titania; 
animated  sweet-pea  blossoms  from  Paradise  :  or  if  you 
will  have  the  vernacular,  butterflies'  wings  !  Every 
collector  of  specimens  in  a  wild  country  needs  India 
rubber  bags ;  and  everybody  with  the  least  "  gump- 
tion," and  a  pair  of  pocket-scissors  or  a  penknife, 
can  make  them.  I  have  made  many  a  one  whose 
adhesiveness  proved  perfectly  satisfactory,  simply  by 
scraping  away  the  cotton  lining  of  the  surface  I 
wished  to  join,  breathing  on  them  and  pressing  them 
firmly  together.  A  still  closer  and  more  artistic  joint 
may  be  made  with  a  special  glue  sold  at  the  stores 
for  that  purpose,  but  which  anybody  can  imitate  by 
preparing  a  viscid  solution  (a  little  thicker  than  the 
thickest  molasses)  of  pure  gum  caoutchouc  in  ether 
or  sulphide  of  carbon.  If  you  can  carry  this  with 
the  certainty  of  not  having  it  spill  out,  it  will  prove 
very  convenient.  It  sticks  like  pitch,  and,  as  its  sol- 
vents are  not  always  at  hand,  may  make  a  dreadful 
mess  of  clothes,  books,  or  papers ;  though  I  have 
carried  it  thousands  of  miles  without  an  accident.  It 
should  be  kept  in  a  box  with  a  screw  cover. 

During  the  day  I  had  frequent  occasion  to  regret 
the  hurried  rate  at  which  our  limited  time  compelled 
us  to  pass  through  this  region.  The  area  we  trav- 
ersed had  evidently  been  the  scene  of  frequent  and 
varied  geological  disturbances.  The  strata  which  out- 
cropped among  the  round  gray  hills  were  of  widely 


THE  APPROACH  TO   SALT  LAKE   CITY.          269 

different  lithological  characters  and  widely  separated 
periods.  The  hydrographic  plan  of  the  region  was 
simple  enough,  having  reference,  as  I  have  said,  to  the 
single  drainage  system  of  Colorado  (Green)  River. 
We  passed,  however,  indications  of  a  former  entirely 
different  distribution  of  the  affluents ;  wide  areas  of 
water-rolled  pebbles,  sterile  as  a  quarry,  and  pre- 
cipitous cliffs  guarding  the  plainly  defined  bed  of  a 
river  which  had  once  rolled  at  their  base.  Near  the 
station  of  Rock  Point,  in  a  friable,  ferruginous  sand- 
stone, I  discovered  well  preserved  casts  and  some 
fossil  fragments  of  Ostracidae  which  I  referred  to 
Gryphcea,  and,  in  another  bed  of  shaly  texture,  frag- 
ments of  what  I  supposed  to  be  an  Inoceramus.  I 
believe  that  a  special  survey  of  this  entire  link  would 
abundantly  repay  the  geologist.  The  precipitous  line 
of  river  bluffs  which  marked  the  dry  bottom  had  an 
extent  of  several  miles,  and  were  in  some  places  as 
high  as  the  Palisades  of  the  Hudson.  I  much  regretted 
having  no  time  to  go  to  them,  but  at  the  distance  of 
about  a  mile  and  a  half  (our  nearest  approach)  they 
appeared  to  belong  to  a  sandstone  period,  probably 
of  the  cretaceous  era.  All  day  the  same  desolation 
marked  the  Flora  of  the  landscape  ;  grease  wood, 
artemisia,  and  an  occasional  stinted  cedar  being  the 
only  shrubby  vegetation. 

On  the  levels  strewn  with  water-worn  pebbles  I 
observed  that  the  surface  was  changing  almost  hourly 
under  the  operation  of  the  winds  and  sand.  Within 
a  few  minutes  I  observed  several  sand  dunes  con- 
structed, and  several  others  removed,  —  both  classes 
being  cones  of  several  feet  in  height.  Several  times 
we  passed  remarkable  indications  of  the  fact  that  at  no 
very  remote  period,  possibly  since  the  commencement 


270       THE  HEART  OF  THE  CONTINENT. 

of  white  immigration  to  this  region,  the  buffalo  has 
existed  on  this  side  of  the  Rocky  Mountain  water- 
shed. At  present  his  furthest  range  reaches  only  with- 
in the  lower  line  of  ridges  on  the  eastern  slope  of  the 
system,  —  individuals  of  the  tribe  being  occasionally 
shot  in  the  canons  of  Colorado,  but  none  having  been 
known  by  the  present  inhabitants  to  pass  the  first 
snow-range.  Several  old  hunters  and  trackers  of 
large  experience,  whose  acquaintance  I  formed  in 
Colorado,  believed  in  the  existence  of  a  separate 
species  of  bison,  peculiar  to  the  mountains,  charac- 
terized by  greater  size  than  the  Plains  animal,  and 
still  further  differing  from  those  congeners  in  their 
stationary  habits,  remaining  in  the  mountain  fast- 
nesses all  the  year  round,  instead  of  emigrating  south- 
ward with  the  approach  of  winter.  Furthermore,  the 
habits  of  this  supposed  species  were  solitary.  They 
were  never  met  in  herds,  and  in  couples  only  during 
the  marital  season.  At  one  time  I  was  almost  led  by 
the  accounts  which  I  received  into  the  belief  that 
the  animal  described  by  hunters  who  had  killed  spe- 
cimens in  the  range,  was  neither  more  nor  less  than  a 
stray  from  that  exceedingly  interesting  family  which 
finds  its  usual  habitat  in  the  barrens  of  a  much  more 
northerly  portion  of  our  Continent ;  namely,  that  con- 
necting link  between  the  Bovidae  (already,  as  repre- 
sented by  the  bison,  manifesting  a  wide  departure 
from  the  typical  bull  in  this  same  direction)  and  the 
sheep  (as  compromised  toward  the  bison  in  the 
"Bighorn"),  the  musk-ox,  or  Ovibos  Moschatus.  Re- 
mains of  this  animal  have  been  found  in  tertiary  beds 
of  the  Continent  much  further  south  than  Denver; 
but  having  no  specimens,  and  only  an  unscientific  re- 
port to  proceed  upon,  I  was  obliged  to  abandon  my 


THE   APPROACH  TO   SALT  LAKE   CITY.  271 

hypothesis  in  view  of  the  fact  that  no  living  individ- 
ual has  been  found  within  the  memory  of  man  fur- 
ther south  than  60°  lat.  N.  I  know  of  no  country 
where  a  given  type  of  animals  has  its  divisions  shaded 
into  each  other  by  so  complete  a  series  of  delicate 
gradations  as  prevails  among  the  hollow-horned  ru- 
minants of  North  America,  taking  them  in  their  order 
from  the  domestic  sheep  to  the  domestic  cow,  through 
the  bighorn,  the  ovibos,  and  the  bison.  Indeed,  either 
of  these  three  suggests  one  type  nearly  as  much  as 
another. 

The  indications  of  the  bison's  former  passage  of 
the  Rocky  Mountains  lie  strewn  over  a  wide  area.  In 
several  places  along  our  route  within  the  Green  River 
link,  I  observed  skulls  of  this  tribe  in  excellent  pres- 
ervation. In  some  instances  the  horns  were  as  entire 
as  on  the  day  that  the  animal  was  killed ;  the  apices 
being  only  slightly  rounded.  Some  of  them  were  in 
the  argillaceous  deposit  of  overflows  from  the  tribu- 
taries of  the  Green ;  others  projected  out  of  sand 
dunes ;  and  several  lay  entirely  exposed  to  sight  on 
the  denuded  and  water-worn  pebbles  of  the  wide 
tract  above  referred  to. 

The  fact  of  our  gradual  approach  to  Salt  Lake  was 
now  indicated  increasingly  at  every  stage  of  our  prog- 
ress. We  found  in  every  spring  the  evidence  of  a  for- 
mer submersion  of  this  entire  tract  beneath  the  waters 
of  a  stagnant  inland  sea.  Salt  Lake  remains  as  the  last 
vestige  of  a  period  when  the  vast  estuary  which  set 
northwesterly  from  the  present  boundaries  of  the 
Gulf  of  Mexico  to  the  plateau  of  Snake  River,  was 
caught  by  a  sudden  upheaval  of  transverse  ranges 
which  forever  shut  it  up  from  its  connection  with 
tide-water,  and  cut  it  up,  by  a  series  of  colossal  walls 


272       THE  HEART  OF  THE  CONTINENT. 

or  dams,  into  a  number  of  minor  saline  lakes,  in  all 
respects  but  size  exactly  corresponding  to  the  pres- 
ent Great  Salt  Lake  of  Utah.  The  theory  of  this 
formation,  fortunately  for  the  student,  has  a  perfect 
paradigm  in  that  remarkable  reservoir;  and  in  the 
proper  place  I  shall  show  how  admirably,  yet  minutely, 
it  explains  itself  and  many  neighboring  tracts,  which, 
but  for  its  survival  from  the  period  when  it  was  only 
one  of  many,  might  prove  obstinate  problems  to  the 
geologist  and  physical  geographer. 

At  Rock  Point  we  encountered,  for  the  first  time 
since  leaving  the  Nebraska  Plains,  what  in  this  region 
and  at  this  season  was  an  unusual  phenomenon,  a 
drenching  shower  of  rain.  I  would  have -been  glad 
to  have  caught  some  of  the  sky's  bounty,  had  any 
receptacle  been  at  hand,  for  the  spring  water  found 
at  long  intervals  on  our  route  was  exceedingly  nau- 
seous. The  alkaline  water  on  the  eastern  side  of  the 
mountains  was  bad  enough,  but  this  was  many  grades 
beyond.  Much  of  the  soda  and  potash  in  the  former 
was  drawn  from  vast  beds  of  feldspar,  a  mineral  which 
seems  in  this  climate  peculiarly  susceptible  to  decom- 
position, and  in  many  places  may  be  seen  rotting 
out  of  the  granite  formations  into  an  impalpable  pow- 
der. The  mineral  constituents  of  the  springs  we 
now  encountered  were  much  more  varied  and  abun- 
dant, embracing  chloride  of  sodium,  sulphur  and  sul- 
phide of  hydrogen,  iron  in  the  form  of  chromate  and 
peroxide,  carbonates  of  potash  and  soda,  sometimes 
associated  with  bromine  and  iodine.  The  source  of 
these  was  no  contemporary  decomposition,  but  the 
beds  deposited  through  an  unmeasured  period  by 
stagnant  bodies  of  salt  water,  cut  off  from  all  means 


THE  APPROACH  TO   SALT  LAKE   CITY.          273 

of  escape  save  evaporation  and  a  gradual  deposit  from 
a  super-saturated  solution. 

The  night  after  leaving  Eock  Point  was  the  wildest 
in  which  I  ever  travelled.  The  heavens  were  pitchy 
black,  except  in  patches  where  now  and  then  the 
moon  succeeded  in  struggling  through  a  thinner 
layer  of  clouds  to  flash  on  us  an  instantaneous  view 
of  our  horrible  surroundings,  drowning  in  the  mid- 
night sea  directly  after,  and  leaving  us  to  a  worse 
mystery  and  dread.  The  wind  blew  from  every  point 
in  the  compass,  and  would  have  howled  had  there 
been  anything  to  howl  in,  but  trees  there  were  none. 
Our  way  wound  over  a  succession  of  bare,  rocky 
ridges,  like  the  perilous  reefs  of  a  sea  suddenly 
drained  dry.  Some  of  these  were  two  or  three  hun- 
dred feet  above  the  general  level,  and  as  nearly  per- 
pendicular as  they  could  be  consistently  with  oifering 
any  possible  foothold  and  passage  to  our  horses.  This 
part  of  the  Overland  road  abundantly  deserves  its 
reputation  of  being  the  worst  between  the  Missouri 
and  Washoe.  Like  the  boy  in  the  song,  I  did  not 
dare  to  sleep,  and  went,  metaphorically,  to  walk  the 
deck  with  the  pilot.  Bracing  my  feet  against  the 
dash-board,  I  saw  that  remarkable  man  at  my  side  put 
his  six-horse  team  (we  were  obliged  to  take  an  extra 
pair  for  this  part  of  the  route)  over  precipices  where 
I  should  as  soon  have  thought  of  driving  over  a  well- 
curb.  Quintus  Curtius  at  $50  a  month  !  Even  he 
acknowledged  that  he  never  drove  this  stage  without 
expecting  to  break  his  neck.  Frequently  the  valleys 
into  which  we  dove  were  so  narrow  and  abrupt  (I  say 
"  valleys,"  though  they  were  mere  crevices  of  dislo- 
cation in  perfectly  bare  rock)  that  our  leaders  were 
clawing  their  way  up  the  slippery  sandstone  ledges, 

18 


274       THE  HEART  OF  THE  CONTINENT. 

while  ourselves,  our  wheelers,  and  the  middle  team 
were  rushing  headlong  with  the  weight  of  the  wagon 
almost  tumbling  on  them  bodily.  In  one  such  place 
the  descent  was  full  sixty  feet,  with  a  45°  incline ;  and 
the  road  up  the  opposite  wall  of  the  chasm  instead  of 
lying  in  line  with  that  we  were  descending,  turned 
abruptly  to  one  side  nearly  a  full  quadrant  to  avoid  a 
precipice  tenfold  worse  than  that  down  which  we  were 
plunging.  Talk  of  steeple-chases  !  A  good  horseman 
on  his  own  trusty  horse  knows  only  the  name  of  fear 
before  any  leap  short  of  the  eaves  of  a  house ;  but 
cooped  up  with  six  in  a  box,  he  might  well  turn  pale 
and  be  no  coward.  Save  me  henceforth  from  a  stee- 
ple-chase in  a  wagon ! 

Soon  after  daylight  broke  we  reached  the  Green 
River.  The  approach  to  it  was  through  a  picturesque 
canon  walled  by  perpendicular  crags  of  red  sandstone 
five  or  six  hundred  feet  high.  This  formation  was 
several  miles  in  length,  and  abutted  boldly  upon  the 
river,  where  its  face  was  weathered  into  remarkable 
imitations  of  sculpture  similar  to  that  of  the  Stone- 
Calvin  Terrace,  down  whose  giant  staircase  we  had 
carefully  crept  to  the  last  crossing  of  the  Platte.  At 
every  turn  some  colossal  profile  of  Indian,  sphinx, 
helmeted  warrior,  or  frowning  Afrite  projected  from 
an  outstanding  vertical  ledge.  Often  as  I  have  had 
to  refer  to  these  strange  mimicries  of  Nature's  own 
carving,  I  cannot  refrain  from  saying  here  that  they 
always  took  us  by  surprise ;  and  that  for  variety  and 
number  of  profiles,  no  formation  which  we  anywhere 
found  marked  by  these  strange  freaks  surpassed  the 
present  one. 

A  moment's  glance  at  the  Green  River  reveals  the 
reason  of  its  name,  although  its  tinge  tends  rather 


THE   APPROACH  TO   SALT  LAKE  CITY.          275 

toward  the  olive  than  to  that  intense  beryl  shade 
which  characterizes  the  waters  of  the  Niagara  and 
Columbia  Eivers.  We  intersected  it  at  a  distance 
from  its  source  (following  its  sinuosities)  of  about  125 
miles;  and,  although  we  had  no  means  of  measuring 
it  accurately,  I  think  that  its  breadth  at  this  point 
cannot  much  exceed  eighty  yards.  Its  banks  were 
from  twenty-five  to  forty  feet  higher  than  its  present 
water  level,  so  that  its  bed  cannot  vary  laterally  to 
any  great  extent  with  drought  or  snow-melting. 

We  were  ferried  across  here  by  the  same  ingenious 
apparatus  as  that  which  passed  us  over  the  Platte, 
though  the  current  is  rather  more  sluggish  than  that 
stream's,  and  the  trips  necessarily  longer.  The  river 
at  this  season  apparently  averages  ten  feet  in  depth 
at  mid-stream,  though  its  bottom  is  very  irregular, 
abounding  in  sliding  clay  and  quicksand,  which  vary 
the  depth  from  tune  to  time.  While  the  horses  were 
changing,  I  had  a  chance  to  test  the  character  of  its 
bed.  As  the  gastronomer  and  commissary  of  the 
party,  I  had  measured  out  our  rations  of  canned  sweet 
corn  and  tomatoes,  and  intrusted  them  for  prepara- 
tion to  a  woman  at  the  station-house  who  had  gained 
my  confidence  by  her  wholesome  tidy  look,  no  less 
than  the  assertion  that  she  had  just  arrived  here  from 
the  East,  (Fort  Leavenworth !)  and  was  well  acquainted 
with  that  kind  of  victuals.  While  breakfast  was  pre- 
paring under  her  auspices,  I  strolled  a  short  distance 
down  the  river  in  search  of  any  specimens  that  might 
offer.  Scrambling  down  the  bank  in  one  place,  I  saw 
what  seemed  a  firm  promontory  of  hard-baked  clay 
stretching  out  several  feet  from  the  base  of  the 
bolder  river  wall,  and  just  beyond  its  point  a  lizard- 
like  reptile,  which  might  be  the  very  new  Siredon  by 


276       THE  HEART  OF  THE  CONTINENT. 

whose  discovery  I  was  waiting  to  distinguish  myself. 
Fortunately  fame  has  not  so  much  fascination  for  me 
as  a  dry  skin,  to  say  nothing  of  a  live  one,  so  I  felt 
my  ground  with  one  foot  fast.  The  promontory 
proved  to  be  of  the  consistency  of  soft  soap,  my  mere 
experimental  pressure  bogging  my  boot  in  it  nearly 
up  to  the  knee ;  and  when  for  the  sake  of  future  trav- 
ellers possibly  with  less  experience,  together  with  a 
just  vengeance  for  the  dirty  trick  it  had  well-nigh 
played  me,  I  gave  it  a  few  vigorous  kicks  at  its  junc- 
tion with  the  bank,  it  fell  off,  and  dissolved  away  into 
a  sort  of  milky  emulsion,  which  went  down  with  the 
current  like  so  much  suds.  It  was  the  finest  argilla- 
ceous silt  I  ever  saw  assuming  coherency,  and  I  saw 
several  other  instances  of  the  same  formation  on 
tributaries  of  the  same  stream.  Emigrants  lose  many 
cattle  every  year  in  this  deceitful  ooze,  the  poor  creat- 
ures running  into  it  mad  with  thirst  after  a  long 
day's  drive  over  a  springless  tract,  or,  what  is  still 
worse,  a  tract  whose  springs  are  alkaline  and  sa- 
line. Even  the  more  experienced  cattle  of  perma- 
nent settlers  along  the  banks  of  similar  streams  are 
frequently  betrayed  by  the  substantial  look  of  the 
slough ;  and  the  boldness  of  the  true  margin,  together 
with  the  rapidity  of  the  current,  renders  it  almost  an 
impossibility  to  save  them.  I  found  here  an  excellent 
illustration  of  the  process  which  has  preserved  for  us 
so  many  elephants  of  the  tertiary  and  earlier  Adamic 
ages.  I  have  no  doubt  that  an  industrious  overhaul- 
ing of  all  the  plainly  marked  river  beds  which  exist 
in  this  region  at  the  foot  of  palisades  whose  base  has 
not  been  wet  for  centuries  would  abundantly  repay 
the  palaeontologist,  furnish  to  cabinets  the  finest  col- 
lections in  the  world,  not  only  of  duplicates  to  the 


THE  APPROACH   TO   SALT  LAKE  CITY.  277 

extinct  specimens  already  known,  but  possibly  of  spe- 
cies entirely  new  to  science,  and  settle  the  now  very 
uncertain  original  boundaries  of  the  entire  tribe 
of  American  ruminants.  Yet  more:  it  might  throw 
much  light  on  the  very  curious  fact  yearly  receiving 
new  illustrations,  that  the  American  Fauna  is  chrono- 
logically far  in  the  rear  of  that  belonging  to  the  Old 
World.  The  eminent  entomologist,  Dr.  Loew  of  Mese- 
ritz,  in  Prussia,  has  discovered  that  a  number  of  very 
singular  and  interesting  insects  belonging  to  the  pa- 
laeontology of  Europe,  and  immemorially  extinct  there, 
exist  as  living  species  in  our  North  American  forests. 
It  may  not  be  straining  the  analogy  too  far  to  conjec- 
ture that  higher  tribes  than  the  Diptera  found  in  am- 
ber, existed  on  this  Continent  long  after  they  had 
become  obsolete  in  the  other  ;  even,  for  example, 
that  the  gigantic  saurians  of  the  Jurassic  survived 
into  our  tertiary,  and  that  tertiary  pachyderms  of 
Europe,  or  yet  undiscovered  congeners  of  theirs,  roved 
the  emerging  lacustrine  beds,  and  got  bogged  in  the 
treacherous  fluviatile  silt  of  our  earlier  Adamic  pe- 
riod. The  unavoidable  rapidity  of  my  journey 
through  this  most  interesting  tract,  and  my  conse- 
quent inability  to  offer  anything  better  than  hints 
for  the  thorough  workman  who  shall  come  after  me 
when  a  Pacific  Railroad  insures  the  safe  transport 
of  specimens,  and  puts  the  time  of  explorers  entirely 
at  their  own  disposal,  must  save  from  scientific  con- 
tempt these  crude  and  unsupported  suggestions. 

Getting  back  to  breakfast,  I  found  that  my  confi- 
dence had  not  been  misplaced.  The  nice,  tidy  East- 
ern woman  from  Leavenworth  had  done  full  justice 
to  our  provisions,  and  added  further  blessedness  to  the 
repast  by  the  first  bowl  of  rich  fresh  milk  and  dish  of 


278      THE  HEART  OF  THE  CONTINENT. 

new-laid  eggs  we  had  tasted  since  leaving  Denver. 
While  we  were  breakfasting  with  a  relish,  one  of  our 
fellow-passengers  at  the  same  board  vouchsafed  a  re- 
mark about  the  Mormons,  to  the  effect  that  we  were 
rapidly  nearing  their  kingdom,  with  a  little  half-jocose 
warning  against  the  danger  of  having  one's  throat 
cut.  A  sunburnt,  taciturn  young  man,  who  appar- 
ently belonged  at  the  station  as  a  "  herder,"  or  sta- 
ble-helper, looked  up  furtively  from  under  a  pair  of 
shaggy  black  eyebrows,  took  the  speaker  in  with  a 
quick  but  comprehensive  glance,  and,  without  having 
been  noticed  by  more  than  one  besides  myself,  pro- 
ceeded impassively  with  his  ham  and  eggs.  After 
we  rose  from  the  table,  and  paid  our  dollar  a  head  for 
our  really  excellent  breakfast  (the  price  invariably 
charged  us  since  we  entered  the  Mountains,  without 
regard  to  the  large  portion  of  every  meal  furnished 
from  our  own  private  stores,  and  not  exorbitant  con- 
sidering the  immense  distance  which  every  staple 
article  has  to  be  hauled  by  the  Overland  supply 
wagons)  we  strolled  out  to  the  corral,  and  got  into 
conversation  with  our  next  driver.  Our  jocular  fel- 
low-passenger was  nearer  "  the  kingdom "  than  he 
knew.  We  were  in  Utah.  Our  maps  had  not  indi- 
cated the  last  few  miles  of  the  route  by  which  we 
had  come  to  Green  River,  and  we  had  crossed  the 
stream  at  a  point  different  from  our  previous  calcula- 
tion ;  in  other  words,  near  the  point  of  its  intersection 
with  the  one  hundred  and  tenth  parallel,  where  it 
coincides  with  the  eastern  boundary  line  of  Utah. 
I  had  not  expected  to  recognize  Utah  by  any  unerr- 
ing sign;  to  know  when  I  came  to  it  by  a  polyga- 
mistic  flavor  in  the  atmosphere ;  but  I  own  that  the 
sensation  of  entering  Mormondom  without  knowing 


THE   APPROACH  TO    SALT  LAKE   CITY.          279 

it  was  somewhat  singular.  My  own  party  were  all 
too  old  travellers  to  have  been  in  any  danger  of  mak- 
ing such  an  unguarded  self-committal  as  that  of  our 
fellow-passenger  at  the  breakfast  table,  but  for  many 
reasons  we  felt  securer  for  the  knowledge  where  we 
were. 

"  Never  been  in  Utah  afore,  I  reckon  ?  "  said  the 
driver  half  interrogatively. 

"  No  nearer  than  the  Wind  Kiver  Mountains." 

"They  don't  have  many  o'  them  fellows  up  there ?" 

"  What  fellows  ?  " 

"  Why,  these  here  Mormons." 

There  was  a  slighting  tone  in  his  voice  which  we 
could  not  fail  to  recognize  as  an  assumption.  If  he 
had  meant  to  speak  disparagingly  out  of  a  sincere 
heart,  he  was  too  old  a  hand  to  select  such  entire 
strangers  for  his  confidants.  Fortunately  we  were  no 
younger,  and  "smoked"  him  at  once  without  showing 
that  we  did.  He  was  throwing  out  feelers. 

"  You  don't  seem  to  like  them  much,  judging  from 
your  tone,"  said  I.  "  That's  unfortunate,  seeing  you 
have  to  drive  thirty  or  forty  miles  every  day  in  their 
country.  But  you  just  use  them  well,  and  go  your 
own  way  quietly,  —  you'll  never  get  anything  but 
good  treatment  from  them.  If  you're  a  new  hand 
here,  as  I  should  judge  you  are,  take  an  old  travel- 
ler's advice,  and  always  think  half  a  dozen  times  be- 
fore you  speak  once.  If  you  should  happen  to  be 
overheard  talking  about  Mormons  in  such  a  tone  by 
that  tall  young  man  with  the  bushy  eyebrows  who 
sat  opposite  me  at  breakfast,  you'd  be  spotted  at  once, 
and  it  might  make  no  end  of  trouble  for  you  all  along 
the  road.  You  know  whom  I  mean — that  brown- 
complexioned  young  Mormon :  what's  his  name  ?  " 


280       THE  HEART  OF  THE  CONTINENT. 

We  looked  him  in  the  face  without  flinching ;  he 
looked  at  both  of  us  with  undisguised  perplexity,  and, 
as  I  put  the  question,  answered  involuntarily,  — 

"  Cowperthwaite  ! l  Well  —  why  —  why — how  did 
you  know  he  was  a  Mormon  ?  " 

."D'ye  remember  how  the  girl  knew  her  father ? 
Jest  as  easy !  How  do  I  know  you  are  one  ?  The  same 
way." 

"  Well,  thafs  so !  No  use  o'  concealin'  on  it  as  I 
know.  I  aint  ashamed  o't,  — you  bet !  But  d  —  d  if 
you  aint  a  queer  'un  ?  You  beat  my  time,  anyhow. 
Wall,  I'm  glad  to  see  you're  so  friendly  —  give  us  yer 
hand." 

"  We're  friends  to  everybody  that's  civil  and  oblig- 
ing—  that  goes  straight  ahead  minding  his  own  busi- 
ness well,  and  letting  other  people  mind  theirs. 
That's  the  only  way  to  get  on  in  this  world,  driver." 

This  colloquy  not  only  afforded  us  the  amusement 
of  beating  a  man  at  his  own  game,  but  resulted  in  the 
greatest  convenience  to  us  practically.  Without  du- 
plicity or  the  need  of  insuring  ourselves  against  all 
risk  by  exaggerated  professions  of  good-will  to  every 
new  acquaintance  we  were  brought  into  contact  with, 
we  were  immediately  crossed  off  the  list  of  suspects, 
and  had  no  further  anxiety  regarding  jealous  miscon- 
struction or  disagreeable  espionage.  We  took  an  early 
occasion  to  warn  our  incautious  fellow-passenger,  a 
little  Swiss,  who  was  going  out  to  Washoe  to  form  a 
watch-making  partnership  with  a  brother  who  had 
preceded  him  to  this  country  by  several  years.  When 
he  heard  he  had  got  into  Utah  without  knowing  it, 
his  knees  smote  together  at  the  memory  of  the  morn- 
ing's indiscretion;  his  jolly  round  face  paled  to  the 

1 1  give  a  fictitious  name,  of  course. 


THE   APPROACH  TO   SALT  LAKE   CITY.          281 

hue  of  the  Jungfrau  summit ;  his  broken  English  de- 
serted him  entirely,  and  he  fell  back  on  his  French. 

"  Mon  Dieu !  ce  n'£tait  qu'une  de  mes  petites  plais- 
anteries  !  seulement  ga,  —  seulement,  seukment  —  pa- 
role d'honneur  !  Je  n'ai  point  de  prejuge*s,  moi !  Toute 
ma  farnille,  nous  sommes  francs-penseurs  —  mon  frere 
aine  est  Yoltairien.  Yentrebleu !  un  des  plus  preemi- 
nens!  Je  suis  Philosophe, — je  ne  crois  rien  de  tout. 
Adolphe  (c'est  notre  cadet  la),  il  n'a  que  vingt  ans  et 
ses  liaisons  montent  jusqu'a  deux  fois  ce  numerb !  il 
est  vrai  libertin  —  vrai  Don  Giovanni !  Moi  je  n'ai 
point  de  prejuge's  —  quant  aux  Mormons,  de  mon  en- 
fance  j'ai  e'prouve'  pour  ces  braves  gens  des  sentimens 
les  plus  respecteuses,  les  plus  affectionees.  Que  voulez- 
vous  ?  Une  femme,  deux  femmes,  trois,  quatre,  cinq, 
cent,  mil  —  c'est  6gal !  Mais  quoi !  Si  je  resterais  a 
SaltrLac — je  ne  me  generais  pas  par  Tarithmetique — 
je  me  marierais,  je  vous  le  jure  !  deux  fois  par  mois 
—  regulier-r-r-r-ement !  " 

I  now  had  to  caution  him  against  error  in  the  oppo- 
site direction,  lest,  in  singing  the  praises  of  polygamy, 
he  should  rush  into  such  burlesque  as  to  bring  him- 
self into  worse  suspicion.  I  could  see,  at  succeeding 
stations  along  the  road,  that  the  beetle-browed  young 
man  had  not  failed  to  send  his  "  character  "  ahead  of 
him.  He  was  eyed  sharply ;  but  as  we  took  him  to 
a  certain  extent  under  the  wing  of  our  party,  he  es- 
caped trouble, — the  excuse  that  he  was  a  Frenchman, 
and  ignorant  of  our  free  institutions  (from  bigamy  up- 
ward), also  procuring  him  a  certain  amount  of  clem- 
ency. A  more  thoroughly  frightened  man  I  never 
saw  in  my  life.  His  idea  of  a  Mormon  was  Dantesque 
in  its  horror  —  an  elaborate  incarnation  of  all  the 
choicest  varieties  of  atrocious  cruelty,  ingenious  dis- 


282  THE  HEART  OF  THE   CONTINENT. 

honesty,  blasphemous  impiety,  satyrian  immodesty, 
and  quintessential  wickedness,  loved,  sought  after, 
practiced  for  its  own  dear,  radical,  and  unassisted 
sake;  a  compound  of  three  parts  Balfour  of  Burley, 
a  dozen  of  some  bandit  chieftain  of  the  Abruzzi,  ten 
of  Autolycus,  fifty  of  Caligula,  five  hundred  of  Si- 
lenus,  and  the  remaining  equivalents  in  a  scale  of 
thousands  belonging  to  the  old  original  Sathanas 
himself.  Seven  hundred  miles  of  horse-travel  through 
ninety-six  thousand  monsters  compounded  after  form- 
ula !  fancy  the  agony  of  a  poor  little  Swiss  who  had 
that  before  him,  with  half  his  worldly  fortune  in 
French  Louis-d'or  galling  his  ribs  in  a  sort  of  India 
rubber  pack-saddle  (Paris  patent),  and  the  other  half 
in  San  Francisco  credits,  covered  with  sheets  also  of 
rubber,  and  sewed  up  within  the  lining  of  his  coat ! 
I  may  forget  him  if  I  leave  his  conclusion  to  fall  into 
its  proper  chronology;  so  I  will  skip  ahead  with  him, 
and  give  him  his  definite  dismissal  in  a  few  words. 

Having  come  to  regard  our  protection  as  his  only 
salvation,  he  altered  his  original  plan  of  going  on  to 
Washoe  night  and  day,  sans  arrete,  and  stayed  over 
with  us  during  the  time  we  spent  in  Brigham's  capital. 

We  resumed  our  journey  at  the  peril  of  our  lives, 
the  whole  Desert  at  that  time  reeking  with  massacre. 
Here  our  horrors  began.  For  three  hundred  miles 
we  rode  expecting  death  in  every  canon.  But  the 
Indian  had  no  terrors  for  poor  little  Foiedelis.  The 
stoutest  hearts  that  beat  in  our  breasts  were  heavy  as 
lead,  and  we  thought  a  great  deal  of  our  mothers  and 
sisters  and  wives.  But  the  face  of  Foiedelis,  with 
every  league  that  put  Salt  Lake  further  behind,  grew 
more  and  more  like  a  wilted  pippin  under  an  ex- 
hausted receiver.  We  reached  Kuby  Valley  one 


THE   APPROACH  TO   SALT  LAKE   CITY.          283 

afternoon  at  sundown.  We  climbed  from  the  mili- 
tary post  at  that  point  through  Hastings'  Pass,  up 
the  tremendous  eastern  slope  of  the  first  range  of  the 
Humboldt  Mountains.  It  was  after  midnight  when 
our  last  panting  relay  stopped  to  breathe  on  the  sum- 
mit round  of  that  wonderful  scaling  ladder  of  the  Ti- 
tans. Under  the  unflickering  stars  of  that  vaporless 
upper  firmament  we  seemed  unbosomed,  purged  of  all 
care,  —  so  close  to  them  that  their  measureless  quiet 
and  endurance  looked  clear  down  into  us,  read  us, 
knew  us,  soothed  us  like  children  who  had  come 
home  to  them  from  prodigal  wanderings  in  the  desert 
of  the  world  below.  Set  the  White  Mountains  there ! 
the  flattered,  the  boasted  of  the  East.  The  star-shad- 
ows of  our  lower  ridge  would  eclipse  them;  taken 
into  the  shelter  of  a  sublimity  which  merged  them 
with  its  flanking  foot-hills,  they  would  be  obliterated 
as  independent  existences,  yet  have  glory  enough  in 
swelling  a  grandeur  by  which  it  is  no  shame  to  be 
conquered.  From  this  height  of  vision  we  seemed  to 
see  half  a  world  —  the  globe  around  and  down  to  its 
very  girdle.  It  was  the  grandest  night-sight  I  ever 
saw  in  nature.  We  had  well-nigh  forgotten  the  hor- 
rors out  of  which  we  had  now  climbed  forever.  Our 
hearts  seemed  to  beat  close  against  the  everlasting 
youth  of  the  heavens  ;  we  could  not  think  of  the  im- 
minent slaughter  skulking  with  us  three  days  ago 
through  steppes  of  dazzling,  blistering  sand  and 
gnarled,  funereal  wormwood ;  probable  slaughter  yes- 
terday ;  possible  slaughter  all  day  long  to-day.  Life, 
life,  everlasting  life,  fresh  distilled  for  our  first  breath- 
ing, right  out  of  the  loving  heaven  itself;  dew  from 
the  nectaries  of  amaranth  and  asphodel,  to  wipe  from 
the  anxious  wrinkles  of  heart  and  brow  the  dust 


284       THE  HEART  OF  THE  CONTINENT. 

which  the  sirocco  had  powdered  on  us  from  the  leaves 
of  the  wormwood. 

But,  lest  we  should  forget  devout  thanksgiving  in 
the  levity  of  mere  selfish  safety  and  boastful  joy, 
sudden  reminders  of  the  greatness  of  our  salvation 
catch  our  eyes  as  we  bend  them  eastward  over  the 
nightrempurpled  immensity  of  the  far-down  desert. 
Not  meant  as  such  reminders — ah,  no !  though  the 
grateful  heart  turns  all  evilest  things  out  of  their  evil- 
est  purpose  into  goodness  and  blessing,  as  the  sun 
melts  the  very  offal  of  the  world  into  mother  liquor 
for  precious  crystals  and  life-blood  for  flowers  of  Eden. 
The  Goshoot  devils,  who  have  been  dogging  our  steps 
with  the  arrow  and  tomahawk,  are  lighting  up  their  sig- 
nal fires  on  the  black  porphyry  crags  which  rise  from 
the  floor  of  the  desert.  Like  eyes  of  baffled  fiends, 
they  wink  up  at  us  out  of  the  dark,  opening,  one  after 
the  other,  till  more  than  a  score  gleam  balefully  be- 
tween our  mighty  mountain  citadel  and  the  far  hori- 
zon. But  we  are  forever  out  of  the  demons'  clutches. 
We  have  passed  the  hostile  boundary,  we  have  climbed 
the  tremendous  barrier,  and  the  key  to  our  stronghold 
is  held  by  a  sturdy  garrison  of  Californians,  thousands 
of  feet  below  in  the  Ruby  Valley  post.  Each  man  re- 
joices after  his  temperament:  one  thanks  God  qui- 
etly ;  another  utters  a  deep  sigh  of  relief  as  for  the 
first  time  in  days  he  slings  his  rifle  over  his  head,  and 
shuts  his  eyes  to  sleep ;  another  whirls  his  slouch 
about  his  head,  breaking  into  cheers  and  song.  Only 
Foiedelis  remains  stolid  amid  the  general  joy.  Some- 
body has  told  him  that  he  is  not  yet  out  of  Utah, 
though  he  is  out  of  the  Goshoots.  He  will  not  halloo 
till  he  gets  out  of  the  woods.  So  he  waits.  When 
the  day  dawns, — when  we  cross  the  second  ridge,  go 


ATTACK   OF   PAXTHEK. 


THE   APPEOACH  TO   SALT  LAKE   CITY.  285 

through  Chokup  Pass,  are  at  once  over  the  116th 
parallel  and  the  Nevada  line, — then  our  little  Switzer 
has  his  own  private  jubilee  in  his  own  original  way. 
While  we  stop  to  change  horses  he  dances  a  pas-seul, 
which  fills  a  family  of  Digger  Indians,  pensioning  on 
the  station-keeper,  with  admiration  and  dismay ;  he 
snaps  his  fingers ;  he  shakes  his  fist  to  the  eastward 
in  sublime  menace  to  a  whole  Territory  at  once  ;  and 
finally,  having  expended  the  bottled  feelings  of  the 
last  three  weeks,  he  rejoins  us,  wiping  the  perspira- 
tion from  his  face  with  a  handkerchief. 

The  fact  of  meeting  Mormons  on  the  instant  of 
stepping  foot  into  the  Territory  did  not  surprise  us, 
for  we  had  by  no  means  waited  so  long  as  this  to 
make  their  first  acquaintance  on  the  Overland  road. 
They  are  strewn  all  along  from  the  Missouri  River  to 
San  Francisco.  Some  of  them  are  avowed,  others 
known  only  to  the  initiated,  others  undoubtedly  not 
known  at  all.  A  Mormon  and  his  wife  formerly  kept 
the  station  at  Liberty  Farm,  one  hundred  and  ninety- 
three  miles  west  of  Atchison.  Several  of  them  I 
have  known  among  drivers,  numbers  among  stable- 
helpers  and  stock-tenders.  They  are,  so  far  as  I 
know,  unblamable  in  the  discharge  of  their  duties ;  in 
fact,  they  must  attend  to  their  business  as  well  as 
anybody  obtainable  for  their  places,  or  they  would 
not  be  kept  twenty-four  hours  under  the  strict  re- 
gime of  Ben  Holladay.  None  of  them  are  out  of  Utah 
in  disgrace ;  they  keep  up  their  relations  with  the 
Church  government  as  closely  as  ever.  They  are 
detailed  to  duty  on  the  Church's  behalf.  Their  ene- 
mies call  them  by  the  invidious  name  of  spies.  It 
is  certainly  the  case,  that,  by  some  means  or  other, 
nothing  happens  along  the  great  avenues  to  Salt  Lake, 


286       THE  HEART  OF  THE  CONTINENT. 

of  which  Brigham  Young  does  not  get  the  earliest 
advices.  He  is  never  surprised  at  the  arrival  of  any 
person  in  his  capital.  Long  before  your  arrival  is  an- 
nounced in  the  "  Deseret  News,"  he  has  a  memoran- 
dum of  your  name,  your  residence,  your  appearance, 
your  circumstances,  your  purpose  in  coming  to  Utah, 
your  intended  length  of  stay  there,  and  (unless  you 
are  enough  of  an  old  traveller  to.  know  "  a  pump  " 
at  first  sight,  and  keep  your  likes  and  dislikes  to 
yourself  in  all  promiscuous  companies)  your  animus 
towards  Mormonism,  your  value  as  an  ally,  and  the 
importance  of  providing  against  you,  or  propitiat- 
ing you  if  you  are  a  foe.  The  secret  police  system 
of  France  was  never  more  efficient  than  Brigham 
Young's ;  and,  considering  the  much  vaster  territory 
that  lies  under  his  organized  espionage,  I  might  be 
justified  in  saying  that  in  efficiency  none  ever  equaled 
his.  As  a  ruler  of  men,  I  think  the  earth  has  scarcely 
had  his  peer.  The  "one-man  power"  system  is  hasten- 
ing towards  its  final  extinction,  but  its  last  days  are 
its  greatest.  It  dies  giving  birth  to  two  of  its  grandest 
examplars  in  a  single  age — Louis  Napoleon  and  Brig- 
ham  Young.  I  do  not  think  the  grandson  of  the 
Creole  a  match  for  the  Ontario  County  ploughboy. 
Brigham  Young  is  a  religious  fanatic;  Napoleon  has 
no  enthusiasm  of  any  sort;  but  I  believe  that  the 
fanatic  has  the  cooler  business  head.  He  would  never 
have  sent  an  expedition  to  Mexico.  He  may  commit 
crimes,  but  he  does  not  "  do  what  is  worse,  make 
blunders." 

After  leaving  Green  River,  we  continued  our  way 
across  a  country  of  the  same  sterile  aspect  as  that 
described  the  day  before.  The  occurrence  of  exten- 
sive level  tracts,  covered  with  water-worn  pebbles, 


THE   APPROACH  TO   SALT  LAKE   CITY.          287 

still  testified  to  the  former  existence  of  much  larger 
bodies  of  water  that  are  now  compressed  into  the  nu- 
merous but  narrow  tributaries  of  the  Green.  The 
temperature  was  truly  delightful,  standing  not  far 
from  70°  F.  all  day  long,  with  a  light  breeze  from  the 
northwest  which  we  found  very  pleasant,  except  in 
the  vicinity  of  sand  dunes,  where  its  addition  of  pow- 
der to  our  toilet  could  have  been  spared.  We  saw 
numerous  sage-fowl  during  the  day,  as  tame  as  barn- 
yard turkeys;  but  having  secured  all  the  specimens 
we  needed,  and  having  no  idea  of  adding  them  to  our 
larder,  had  no  motive  for  shooting  them.  I  deeply 
regret  the  impossibility  of  having  taken  a  number 
of  them  alive  to  the  States  with  me  on  my  return. 
They  would  make  a  most  valuable  addition  to  our 
poultry  yards,  and  I  can  see  not  the  slightest  obsta- 
cle to  their  domestication. 

About  four  o'clock  in  the  afternoon  we  suddenly 
came  upon  one  of  the  grandest  marvels  which  Nature 
has  given  to  human  admiration  on  this  Continent. 
This  is  "  The  Church  Buttes." 

I  have  had  frequent  occasion  in  these  pages  to 
refer  to  that  remarkable  class  of  formations  which, 
though  not  entirely  absent  from  the  scenery  of  our 
Atlantic  slope,  exist  in  so  few  instances  (as  the  Cats- 
kill,  Franconia,  and  Niagara  Profile  Rocks)  that  they 
have  never  attracted  more  than  passing  attention ; 
while,  throughout  the  savage  interior  of  the  Conti- 
nent, they  have  attained  the  same  neglect  by  the  op- 
posite reason  of  their  very  frequency.  We  go  out  of 
our  way  to  lavish  raptures  upon  the  temples  of  Yuca- 
tan, the  mausolea  of  Dongola,  Nubia,  and  Petrea,  the 
Sphinx,  and  the  Cave  of  Elephanta,  while  through- 
out our  own  mountain  fastnesses  and  trackless  plains 


288      THE  HEART  OF  THE  CONTINENT. 

exist  ruins  of  architecture  and  statuary  not  one  whit 
behind  the  foreign  remains  of  forty  centuries  in 
power  of  execution,  and  far  vaster  in  respect  to  age 
and  size.  At  every  change  of  position  as  we  came 
through  the  sandstone  canon  to  the  Green  River  this 
same  morning,  the  giant  buttresses  of  red  sandstone 
at  one  side  showed  some  new  sculpture  which  lacked 
nothing  to  compete  with  the  half-reliefs  of  the  kings 
whose  slumber  was  broken  by  Layard,  or  the  front- 
faced  colossi  carved  on  the  African  ruins.  Strong, 
stern,  characteristic  faces  were  there ;  no  feature  was 
missing ;  no  imagination  was  needed  to  eke  out  their 
details.  Rather  was  there  needed  an  imagination  of 
the  means  by  which  nature  mimicked  art  after  such 
faithful  fashion,  or  indeed,  at  first  glance,  of  the  pos- 
sibility that  it  could  be  unassisted  nature  at  all. 

The  Church  Buttes  surpass  all  natural  feats  of  this 
order  which  I  have  ever  seen  in  iny  life,  even  that 
wonderful  succession  of  palaces,  temples,  and  ceme- 
tries  between  Monument  Creek  and  the  foot  of  Pike's 
Peak.  I  have  often  been  asked  why  they  had  never 
been  spoken  of  in  such  extravagant  terms  before  I 
wrote  of  them.  The  reasons  are  :  because  the  hardy 
pioneers  who  live  among  the  wonders  of  this  Conti- 
nent get  hardened  to  them  by  familiarity ;  because, 
even  if  they  remained  impressible,  they  have  too 
much  stern  matter  of  fact  in  their  existence  (and  for 
a  generation  to  come  will  have)  to  give  them  time  for 
the  cultivation  of  the  aesthetic ;  because  this  class 
does  not,  as  a  usual  thing,  correspond  with  magazines 
and  journals;  because  the  trail  which  runs  by  Church 
Buttes  is  not  the  one  followed  by  the  vast  majority 
of  travellers ;  and  because  most  of  those  who  do  pass 
them  are  night-and-day  men,  who  spend  most  of  their 
tune  in  sleeping  between  the  Missouri  and  Washoe. 


THE  APPROACH   TO   SALT  LAKE   CITY.  289 

Twenty-one  miles  east  of  Fort  Bridger,  a  line  of 
sand  and  sandstone  bluffs  which  for  the  last  hour  had 
been  seen  skirting  our  southern  horizon  at  the  dis- 
tance of  a  league,  suddenly  curved  toward  us,  send- 
ing out  in  a  nearly  due-north  direction  a  narrow  spur, 
at  whose  extremity,  and  abutting  upon  our  track,  rose 
the  mighty  mass  of  which,  with  a  foregoing  sense  of  in- 
adequacy, I  must  now  try  to  convey  some  idea.  The 
impression  produced  by  the  Church  Buttes  upon  one 
standing  about  fifty  yards  from  their  facade  (the  best 
distance  for  attaining  the  perfect  harmony  of  their 
effect)  is  that  of  a  stupendous  cathedral  or  basilica, 
admirable  for  the  breadth  and  dignity  of  its  design, 
and  the  absolute  symmetry  of  its  proportions,  built 
after  a  new  style  of  architecture,  as  justly  deserving 
a  place  among  the  most  strongly  individualized  or- 
ders of  the  art  and  science  as  the  pure  Greek  of  the 
Parthenon  or  the  Gothic  of  Salisbury  Cathedral.  Al- 
most simultaneously  we  exclaimed,  "  0  that  all  our 
American  architects  could  see  this  marvelous  model! " 
for  we  irresistibly  felt  that  here  were  the  suggestions 
for  an  order  as  fresh  and  original  as  comported  with 
the  virgin  fields  and  forests,  life  and  energy,  spirit 
and  material  of  the  New  World.  Were  I  an  architect, 
I  should  to-morrow  be  on  my  way  to  spend  a  year, 
if  need  be,  in  the  study  of  the  Church  Buttes ;  not 
coming  away  till  I  had  made  myself  master  of  every 
line  in  the  structure,  and  arrived  at  the  method  of 
repeating  it  in  accordance  with  the  limitations  of 
stone  and  mortar  and  the  principles  conditioning  hab- 
itable structure.  The  first  temple  of  art,  science,  or 
religion  which  I  constructed  upon  this  plan  in  New 
York  would  be  that  city's  greatest  ornament,  and  the 
guarantee  of  my  immortality  on  the  roll  of  the  civilized 

19 


290       THE  HEART  OF  THE  CONTINENT. 

world's  artistic  benefactors.  If  this  assertion  seem 
vainglorious,  let  it  be  remembered  that  it  is  also  hypo- 
thetical ;  for  in  the  great  temple,  at  whose  holiest  holy 
minister  Vaux,  and  Mould,  and  Wight,  and  Gambrill,  I 
worship  in  the  Gentiles'  court, — loving  the  art  dearly, 
but  afar;  also  that  were  I  an  architect,  and  successful 
as  my  hypotheses,  the  praise  would  belong  not  to  me, 
but  to  the  nature  I  had  humbly  studied.  With  these 
explanations  I  shall  be  granted  the  mere  amateur's 
license  to  commit  purely  technical  blunders,  and  make 
an  occasional  misuse  of  names. 

The  ground-plan  of  the  Church  Buttes  Cathedral 
deviates  in  a  slight  degree  from  the  circular  contour, 
being  a  quatre-foil  whose  four  component  curves  dif- 
fer very  little  in  their  elements,  but  meet  each  other 
at  internal  angles  sufficiently  acute  to  give  an  im- 
pression of  the  cruciform  outline  proper  to  Christian 
architecture.  The  nave  and  transept  find  their  places 
here,  though  the  curved  have  been  substituted  for 
the  right-lined  exterior. 

Upon  this  base-line  the  body  of  the  Cathedral  rises 
to  a  height  of  about  three  hundred  feet.  (I  give  the 
dimensions  approximately,  for  the  reason  that  the 
half-hour  conceded  to  our  halt  was  necessarily  con- 
sumed, as  indeed  a  hundred  times  that  period  might 
have  been,  in  familiarizing  ourselves  with  the  artistic 
proportions  and  scientific  composition  of  the  magnifi- 
cent mass.  A  few  hasty  sketches,  or  memoranda  of 
its  impression  on  us  at  different  elevations,  were  all 
that  we  had  time  for,  anything  like  an  accurate  trig- 
onometrical observation  being  quite  out  of  the  ques- 
tion. I  have  taken  care  that  my  estimates  under- 
state the  facts  where  they  err  at  all.)  The  body  of 
the  structure  consists  of  a  perpendicular  wall  follow- 


THE  APPROACH  TO   SALT  LAKE   CITY.  291 

ing  (in  cross  sections)  the  curves  of  the  base-line, 
braced  at  intervals  of  astonishing  equality  by  massive 
buttresses  of  the  same  altitude  as  itself.  At  the 
proper  distance  for  a  comprehensive  view,  these  but- 
tresses apparently  differ  from  each  other  in  size  and 
shape  scarcely  more  than  if  they  had  been  erected 
upon  one  single  and  uniform  plan.  The  space  be- 
tween the  buttresses  further  carries  out  the  minute 
resemblance  to  the  planned  offspring  of  a  human  in- 
tellect, by  exhibiting  in  several  places  the  appearance 
of  deep,  arched  recesses,  which  it  needs  but  little 
imagination  to  regard  as  windows  or  niches  for  the 
reception  of  statuary.  I  hardly  dare  to  add  the 
assertion  that  in  several  of  these  niches  the  statues 
for  which  they  seem  the  intended  receptacles  actually 
exist,  and  are  by  no  means  the  least  startling  elements 
in  a  mimicry  which  descends  to  the  minutest  details 
of  its  working  pattern.  Had  not  my  travelling  com- 
panions (some  of  whom  never  in  their  lives  rode  a 
fantasy  without  curb  and  snaffle)  noticed  these 
images,  and  called  my  attention  to  their  striking  en- 
hancement bf  the  vraisemblance  of  the  structure,  —  this, 
too,  long  before  I  could  make  up  my  mind  to  speak 
of  them  at  the  risk  of  having  my  lively  imagination 
cast  in  my  teeth,  —  I  should  hesitate  to  refer  to  them 
in  these  pages,  lest  the  incredulous  reader,  whose  pros- 
ecution of  acquaintance  with  mouldy  European  ruins 
has  denied  him  the  time  to  visit  nature's  immortal 
temples  in  the  heart  of  his  own  Continent,  should  say, 
"  Well !  this  is  going  a  little  too  far."  Let  me  hasten 
to  save  my  credit  by  recording  one  break  in  the  con- 
tinuity of  the  imitation.  The  figures,  which  at  the 
proper  focal  distance  for  a  harmonious  view  of  the 
tout-ensemble  appear  absolutely  statuesque,  are  in  no 


292       THE  HEART  OF  THE  CONTINENT. 

case  entirely  detached  from  the  wall,  but,  on  close 
approach,  are  perceived  to  be  irregular  knobs  and 
projections  from  its  surface.  Fortunately  for  the 
Church  Buttes  !  If  they  could  be  moved,  some  Amer- 
ican Turk  would  have  long  ago  split  them  in  pieces 
to  make  commemorative  paper-weights  when  he  re- 
turned from  his  journey ;  some  Lord  Elgin  or  Barnum 
would  have  long  ere  this  had  them  labeled  on  the 
shelves  of  his  museum.  As  a  further  concession  to 
incredulity,  let  me  add  that  although  their  statue-like 
appearance  at  the  proper  point  of  view  is  most  won- 
derful, Nature  does  not  tax  our  astonishment  by  the 
still  more  elaborate  consistency  of  making  them  re- 
ligious in  their  sentiment  like  the  temple  which  they 
adorn.  She  acts  as  if  her  mighty  effort  of  architec- 
ture (as  happens  so  sadly  often  in  other  fields  worked 
by  genius)  had  toppled  down  her  reason  just  as  she 
came  to  the  final  adornment  of  her  nobly  realized 
conception.  Her  overstrained  intellect  became  un- 
geared just  as  she  grasped  the  chisel  which  was  to 
people  her  niches  with  patriarchs  and  saints,  prophets, 
apostles,  martyrs,  cherubim,  and  grown-up  angels. 

To  return  to  the  architectural  part  of  the  subject. 
The  superstructure  resting  on  the  buttresses  consisted 
of  two  domes,  one  superimposed  upon  the  other ;  the 
upper  inclosing  the  crown  of  the  lower,  'and  descend- 
ing over  it  to  the  extent  of  about  one  third  its  height. 
Each  of  these  domes  was  surrounded  by  a  series  of 
butments  proportioned  to  their  size,  and  seeming  the 
diminished  continuations  of  those  about  the  body  of 
the  edifice  below.  The  school  of  architects  which 
makes  truth  rather  than  beauty  the  guide  of  the 
builder,  and  introduces  conscience  into  the  arena  of 
art,  will  cavil  at  the  proposal  to  imitate  any  such  ar- 


THE   APPROACH  TO   SALT  LAKE   CITY.          293 

rangement,  on  the  ground  that  these  buttresses  "could 
have  no  necessary  office  in  sustaining  the  domes,  and 
are  therefore  false.  I  am  not  going  to  introduce  any 
discussion  of  this  subject  into  these  pages.  They  are 
too  limited  to  hold  one  of  the  widest  quarrels  of  mod- 
ern times.  I  can  only  say  that  the  effect  of  breaking 
up  the  domes  by  these  obviously  unnecessary  buttress- 
like  projections  was  very  beautiful.  Together  the 
domes  were  somewhat  higher  than  the  lower  structure, 
and  made  a  total  altitude  of  about  seven  hundred  feet. 

I  have  been  thus  minute,  because  in  no  other  way 
could  I  convey  to  my  readers  the  effect  produced  by 
this  wonderful  structure.  It  is  not  intended,  I  hardly 
need  say,  to  convey  the  impression  that  a  man  with 
a  microscope  would  discover  the  absolute  mathemat- 
ical lines  of  a  structure  such  as  I  have  described, 
should  he  attempt  to  verify  me  by  passing  his  face 
over  the  entire  surface  of  the  Church  Buttes.  What 
I  assert  is  that  at  the  distance  of  from  fifty  to  a  hun- 
dred yards,  the  effect  of  such  a  structure  is  produced, 
with  very  little  assistance  from  imagination. 

Coming  upon  the  formation  in  the  wild  heart  of 
the  Continent,  no  human  society  near  you  save  no- 
mads like  yourself,  your  irresistible  feeling  (if  any 
feeling  you  have  for  either  nature  or  art)  must  be 
one  of  silent,  awe-struck  wonder.  The  imitation  of 
man's  work  by  nature  always  arouses  such  a  feeling. 
Before  reaching  here,  you  will  have  felt  it,  roving  the 
green  bottoms  of  the  Republican,  and  suddenly  com- 
ing upon  lovely  parks  whose  floor  of  fresh  turf  seem 
newly  dismissed  from  the  lawn-shears  of  the  gardener ; 
whose  stately  elms,  pecans,  and  cotton-woods  were 
disposed  in  such  graceful  groups  and  leaf-arched  av- 
enues that  but  for  their  age  Downing  himself  might 


294       THE  HEART  OF  THE  CONTINENT. 

have  set  them;  whose  well  defined  paths,  entirely 
free  from  undergrowth,  so  symmetrical  and  so  con- 
venient in  their  direction  and  arrangement,  you  can 
hardly  credit  to  the  water-seeking  elk  and  buffalo. 
At  every  step  of  your  way  among  the  Colorado  foot- 
hills, the  same  feeling  will  be  awakened  in  you  by 
natural  ruins,  statues,  castles,  temples,  monuments ; 
it  will  follow  you  through  the  grim  defiles  and  up  the 
snow-crowned  ridges  of  the  Eocky  Mountain  system, 
excited  by  the  ruins  of  Titanic  cities  scattered  over 
areas  of  many  grassless,  soilless  leagues.  It  never 
lost  its  freshness  with  me  ;  it  was  always  a  source  of 
child-like  terror  and  delight;  to  this  day  I  cannot 
analyze  it,  unless  on  the  principle  of  its  affording  a 
certain  momentary  argument  for  the  supernatural, 
which,  ere  you  can  recover  your  cold  literalism  and 
modernity,  your  logical  balance,  and  your  grasp  of  phil- 
osophical explorations,  sets  you  back  in  your  child- 
hood's or  your  ancestors'  marvel-world  —  shows  you 
how  the  baby  feels,  how  the  ancients  felt.  It  is  as 
if  the  kobold,  the  elf,  the  cyclops,  and  the  afrite  had 
suddenly  confronted  you,  barring  the  way  through 
some  awful  fastness  of  a  scarcely  trodden  world,  and, 
catching  you  all  alone  there  in  the  gloom,  said  to 
you,— 

"  You  have  abjured  us ;  you  laugh  at  us ;  you  deny 
us.  Look  at  our  proofs  :  there  are  the  sculptures  we 
carved,  the  cities  we  built ! " 

About  nightfall  we  reached  Fort  Bridger.  This, 
like  every  military  post  in  the  mountains,  is  a  plain 
stockade  work,  incapable  of  resisting  civilized  siege, 
but  quite  sufficient  for  the  protection  of  its  inmates 
against  any  force  which  could  be  brought  against  it 
by  its  only  enemies,  the  Indians.  The  inclosure  con- 


THE  APPROACH  TO   SALT  LAKE   CITY.          295 

tains  several  barrack-buildings  and  a  d£p6t  for  gov- 
ernment supplies  as  well  as  a  large  store  furnishing 
all  the  necessary  equipments  for  a  settler's  outfit. 
We  found  the  fort  garrisoned  by  detachments  from 
several  Nebraska,  Kansas,  and  Colorado  regiments, 
whose  officers  extended  very  cordial  invitations  to  our 
party  to  lie  over  for  a  few  days,  enjoy  the  fine  hunt- 
ing and  scenery  in  the  neighborhood,  and  become 
better  acquainted  with  a  mess  whose  courtesy  gave 
us  assurance  of  a  very  agreeable  time,  had  we  not 
felt  it  necessary  to  reach  California  as  soon  as  pos- 
sible. 

Here,  too,  we  found  one  of  the  most  noted  of  Over- 
land characters,  Slade,  formerly  one  of  the  road- 
agents  of  the  line  we  were  now  travelling,  on  his 
way  to  Virginia  City  in  Idaho.  I  had  an  interest- 
ing talk  with  him,  and  asked  him  for  an  account  of 
his  celebrated  fights  with  Old  Jule,  as  well  as  the  ter- 
rible vengeance  which  he  wreaked  upon  him.  Our 
time  being  limited,  of  his  own  accord  he  promised 
to  write  me  what  I  asked,  and  forward  it  to  me  for 
use  in  this  or  any  future  work  I  might  write,  intro- 
ducing characters  or  scenes  from  the  Plains  and  the 
Mountains.  Without  any  appearance  of  self-con- 
ceit, he  still  seemed  pleased  when  I  told  him  what 
was  very  true,  —  that  his  adventures  in  the  wilds 
would  afford  materials  for  an  intensely  interesting 
romance  of  adventure.  Poor  fellow  !  The  next  time 
I  heard  of  him  was  in  conversation  with  an  Idaho 
man  who  had  been  present  at  his  death.  During  the 
reign  of  terror*  which  is  one  of  the  invariable  stages 
of  a  new  mining  settlement,  and  may  be  called  its 
"teething"  period,  Slade  was  an  efficient  member  of 
the  Virginia  City  vigilance  committee,  and  took  part 


296      THE  HEART  OF  THE  CONTINENT. 

in  the  execution  of  many  terrible  desperadoes.  But 
bloody  revolutions,  like  France's  earliest  and  typical 
one,  generally  "return  to  plague  the  inventor;  "  and 
Slade,  becoming  a  terror  to  his  compeers,  was  in  April, 
1864,  himself  put  to  death  without  even  being  granted 
the  privilege  of  a  parting  farewell  to  his  wife.  When 
the  news  reached  her,  she  had  no  tears  to  shed,  but 
"  spotted  "  the  members  of  the  committee,  and  reg- 
istered a  fearful  oath,  that  before  she  died  her  hus- 
band should  be  avenged  on  them  to  the  full.  I  should 
hate  to  be  one  of  that  committee ;  for  not  only  is 
Mrs.  Slade  one  of  the  finest  pistol-shots  in  the  West 
(without  any  allowance  for  her  sex),  but  a  woman  of 
long  memory,  and  in  reckless  courage  the  perfect 
match  and  compeer  of  her  late  husband.  She  is  a 
magnificent  woman  in  appearance,  and  I  thought 
Slade  himself  a  model  of  manly  beauty. 

Much  as  we  regretted  missing  an  Indian  powwow 
that  was  to  have  taken  place  the  day  after,  and 
would  have  supplied  much  valuable  genre  material 
to  pencil  and  pen,  we  bade  good-by  to  our  kind 
would-be  entertainers,  with  a  promise  to  stop  with 
them  if  we  returned  from  California  overland. 

Black's  Fork  of  the  Green  River  is  a  small  stream 
affording  good  water  privileges  to  the  Fort,  and  puz- 
zles the  traveller  by  running  north  from  the  spot 
where  he  now  crosses  it,  until  his  map  shows  him 
its  remarkable  sinuosity.  Having  crossed  this  and 
Muddy  Fork,  about  twelve  miles  further  on,  he  is  out 
of  the  Green  River  basin,  and  almost  immediately  en- 
ters a  tract  tributary  to  that  of  the  Great  Salt  Lake. 
A  series  of  tremendously  heavy  grades  lead  him  into 
the  Wahsatch,  the  last  and  westernmost  range  of  the 
Rocky  Mountains. 


THE  APPROACH  TO   SALT  LAKE   CITY.  297 

Immediately  about  Fort  Bridger  a  small  surface  had 
been  put  under  cultivation  for  the  partial  supply  of 
residents  at  the  Post,  and  in  some  directions  ever- 
green wood  was  plenty ;  but  on  entering  the  Wah- 
satch,  we  again  came  into  a  region  of  gray  round  hills 
having  no  vegetation  but  the  artemisia  and  grease 
wood.  The  night  was  a  magnificent  one.  The  full 
moon  was  in  a  cloudless  sky ;  the  air  was  perfectly 
still,  and  although  abundantly  cold,  to  show  us  that 
we  were  still  at  a  mountainous  altitude,  not  to  com- 
pare in  this  respect  with  that  of  the  ridges  we  had 
hitherto  passed  at  night.  I  had  by  this  time  acquired 
the  habit  of  going  without  sleep  (one  much  easier 
than  that  of  sleeping-  bent  into  an  ampersand) ;  so  I 
abandoned  the  inside  to  companions  accomplished  in 
that  performance,  and,  having  lost  at  some  stage- 
changing  station  the  guy-rope  apparatus  by  which  I 
had  lashed  myself  to  the  wagon-top  in  former  times 
of  miserable  sleepiness,  at  once  selected  the  one  prac- 
ticable method  of  entertaining  myself,  and  got  into 
conversation  with  the  driver.  The  only  scenery  was 
that  congeries  of  ashen-hued  hills  I  have  mentioned, 
whose  formation  could  be  accounted  for  by  a  lively 
imagination  on  the  hypothesis  that  when  this  part 
of  the  world  was  in  a  liquid,  or,  more  strictly,  in  a 
lathery  condition,  some  Titan  school-boy  had  put  his 
pipe-bowl  into  the  basin,  and  blown  the  contents  up 
into  a  mass  of  contiguous  bubbles.  If  these  bubbles 
had  been  iridescent  like  those  of  our  childhood,  the 
reflection  of  that  gorgeous  full  moon  on  them  to-night 
would  have  been  worth  seeing ;  but  their  gray  mono- 
tone and  constantly  repeated  figure  made  this  land- 
scape the  drowsiest  on  our  journey. 

The  sun  was  well  up  when  we  reached  Bear  Eiver 


298      THE  HEART  OF  THE  CONTINENT. 

(the  first  of  the  Salt  Lake  tributaries),  striking  it  about 
thirty  miles  north  of  its  head,  where  it  is  a  substan- 
tial stream  of  forty  or  fifty  yards  in  breadth,  with  less 
than  the  average  rapidity  of  mountain  currents,  of  a 
somewhat  muddy  tinge,  and  cradled  by  the  same 
round  hills  of  gray  sage  as  those  which  we  had  been 
threading  all  night.  Here  we  took  breakfast.  I  long 
ago  concluded  not  to  bore  my  readers  with  gastro- 
nomic comments,  unless  the  subject  deserved  animad- 
version by  unusual  excellence  or  absolute  atrocity. 
The  Bear  River  breakfast  does  not  belong  to  the  first 
class  of  subjects ;  a  recent  good  dinner  has  made  me 
magnanimous  toward  the  errors  of  my  race,  so  I  spare 
Bear  River. 

We  were  now  ninety-two  miles  from  Salt  Lake  City. 
Bear  River,  at  this  point,  lies  in  the  trough  between 
the  first  and  second  ridges  of  the  Wahsatch  Range. 
Immediately  after  crossing  the  river  by  a  substantial 
wooden  bridge,  we  began  to  ascend  a  bald  mountain, 
which  rose,  as  I  estimated,  from  twelve  to  fifteen 
hundred  feet  above  the  bed  of  the  stream,  and  which 
compelled  us,  for  the  horses'  sake,  to  dismount  and 
walk.  I  must  not  omit  to  say  that  our  load  had  been 
increased  at  Bear  River  by  three  soldiers  of  a  Cali- 
fornia regiment  stationed  at  Salt  Lake  City.  These 
constituted  part  of  the  detail  for  Overland  Mail  pro- 
tection, furnished  by  General  Connor,  commandant  at 
the  Mormon  city,  and  afterwards,  as  he  well  deserved, 
and  as  an  instance  of  unusual  government  perspicuity, 
at  the  head  of  the  expedition  sent  out  for  a  final  end- 
ing of  all  our  Indian  troubles.  Our  gallant  preservers 
were  a  noble  set  of  men,  but  (I  say  it  neither  in  sor- 
row nor  in  anger)  they  took  up  room.  We  knew  that 
although  the  present  area  of  greatest  peril  to  our 


THE   APPROACH  TO   SALT  LAKE   CITY.  299 

scalps  lay  on  the  other  side  of  Salt  Lake  City,  extend- 
ing over  a  little  less  than  three  hundred  miles  of  des- 
ert, there  had  been,  at  various  times,  terrible  massacres 
on  this  side  of  the  Wahsatch  also ;  yet  our  intellects, 
prevented  by  long  cramping  and  distortion  of  their 
fleshly  receptacle,  lacked  the  equanimity  for  a  just 
striking  of  the  balance  between  death  by  scalping 
and  the  same  disaster  more  slowly  effected  by  squeez- 
ing. I  fear  we  were  not  grateful.  I  know  that  I  my- 
self wished  the  detail  belonged  to  the  Cavalry  arm  of 
our  service.  But  the  brave  fellows  were  very  patient 
with  us,  and  sat  as  nearly  sideways  as  could  be  ex- 
pected of  the  class  whose  prime  aphorism  is  "  Eyes 
front ! " 

In  a  state  of  semi-somnambulism  we  all  got  out,  and 
effected  the  ascent  of  the  first  grade  from  Bear  Kiver 
on  foot.  Even  the  sleepiest  of  us  was  rewarded  when 
he  reached  the  top,  and  stood  still  to  wait  for  the 
panting  beasts  we  had  distanced,  and  was  obliged  in 
candor  to  own  that  the  view  from  this  height  to  the 
opposite  ridge  and  along  the  slender  creeping  line  of 
the  Bear  was  abundantly  worth  the  fatigue  of  walk- 
ing to  obtain  it. 

About  noon  we  entered  that  famous  gallery  of  the 
Wahsatch,  the  first  of  an  intercommunicating  series 
which  lead  by  easy  grades  entirely  through  the  range 
and  down  to  Salt  Lake  City — Echo  Canon.  The  series 
is  one  of  the  most  magnificent  avenues  by  which  Na- 
ture has  ever  supplemented  human  art  or  challenged 
it  to  hopeless  contest.  To  wring  from  Nature  such  an 
avenue  and  right  of  way  between  two  tracts  divided 
in  their  physical  geography  by  a  heaven-high  barrier 
a  hundred  miles  thick,  would  have  cost  man  at  least 
a  century  of  the  most  enlightened  skill  and  the  most 


300  THE  HEART  OF   THE   CONTINENT. 

industrious  labor.  Therefore,  as  if  she  felt  sympathy 
with  those  social  and  commercial  currents  which  seek 
to  mingle  grandly  over  the  whole  world,  she  gives 
man  the  pass  of  the  Wahsatch,  free  as  air. 

The  Echo  Canon  is  a  cleft  through  the  range,  about 
ten  miles  long  and  of  varying  width,  sometimes  open- 
ing laterally  into  valleys  or  recesses  a  mile  broad, 
often  contracting  to  a  mere  alley-way  of  twenty  or 
thirty  yards  across.  It  has  a  main  southwesterly 
trend,  and  at  its  bottom  runs  the  little  creek  named 
after  it,  a  small  mountain  rivulet  fed  partly  by  springs 
and  partly  by  such  slender  tricklings  as  reach  it  from 
the  distant  snows.  The  walls  of  the  canon  are  every- 
where precipitous,  and  in  the  narrowest  defiles  quite 
perpendicular,  frequently  rising  to  a  height  of  ten  or 
twelve  hundred  feet.  These  are  mostly  of  a  brilliant 
red  sandstone,  and  their  effect  on  a  sunshiny  day  is 
like  that  of  masses  of  carbuncle. 

Echo  Canon  must  obviously  have  received  its  name 
from  an  echo,  though  neither  by  experiment  nor  ask- 
ing could  I  discover  one  sufficiently  remarkable  to 
have  given  its  name  to  such  a  magnificent  work  of 
Nature.  Its  grandeur  fortunately  makes  it  of  no  im- 
portance whether  this  subsidiary  clap-trap  be  well 
based  or  not.  Another  source  of  its  reputation  exists 
in  Brigham's  preparation  to  fortify  it,  several  years 
ago,  when,  to  appease  a  sudden  access  of  anti-Mor- 
monism  at  the  East,  Government  (or  rumor  for  it) 
proposed  to  send  an  expedition  against  Salt  Lake 
City,  and  break  up  the  entire  Mormon  settlement. 
Fortunately  that  act  of  folly  was  not  committed,  al- 
though a  still  worse  one  was.  The  Mormons  were 
not  attacked,  but  a  body  of  United  States  troops 
were  subsisted  at  enormous  expense  at  Camp  Floyd 


THE  APPROACH  TO   SALT  LAKE   CITY.          301 

(well  named  after  a  thief  and  spendthrift  of  the  peo- 
ple's money),  a  place  thirty-nine  miles  from  the  Mor- 
mon city,  and  having  no  single  advantage  as  a  strate- 
gic or  commercial  post,  except  its  possession  of  a  well 
not  too  brackish  to  drink  of.  These  unfortunate 
troops  were  called  an  army  of  observation,  probably 
because  they  must  have  built  an  observatory,  and 
used  a  telescope,  to  see  any  Mormons  at  all.  The 
distance  was  not,  however,  too  great  for  the  inter- 
change of  courtesies  on  the  part  of  the  chief  men  of 
either  side,  nor  for  the  daily  visit  of  enterprising 
commercial  saints  with  something  to  sell.  General 
Johnson,  in  accordance  with  the  orders  of  the  venera- 
ble imbecile  at  the  head  of  affairs,  acted  as  the  leader 
of  a  nice,  well-behaved  little  army  should,  and  never 
gave  the  saints  any  offense.  To  revive  a  joke  in- 
vented for  the  benefit  of  another  military  quietist  : 
It  seems  a  shame  to  attack  him ;  he  never  attacked 
anybody.  So  he  stayed  there,  until  from  being  an 
eye-sore  to  the  more  irritable  Mormons,  he  became  a 
laughing-stock  to  all  of  them.  He  is  a  good  joke 
among  them  to  this  day.  The  crows  laugh  at  a  scare- 
crow they  have  detected ;  how  much  heartier  would 
they  laugh  if  they  could  sell  him  his  own  grain  at 
one  hundred  per  cent,  over  the  market,  or,  to  stretch 
the  metaphor,  his  own  beeves  at  the  same  rate ! 

The  narrow  defile  which  Brigham  selected  to  fortify 
before  he  knew  his  invaders,  is  a  very  Thermopylae. 
Its  bare  red  walls  rise  to  a  height  of  fifteen  hundred 
feet  in  a  sheer  perpendicular.  An  army  of  the  size 
.of  Johnson's  could  have  been  decoyed  into  this  de- 
file (its  narrowest  part  is  no  wider  than  Broadway  at 
Union  Square),  and  there  put  to  death  at  the  pleasure 
of  their  foes.  Brigham's  idea  was  to  shower  them 


302      THE  HEART  OF  THE  CONTINENT. 

with  grape  and  shrapnel  from  declined  guns  hung 
over  the  edge  of  the  precipice,  and  sweep  them  with 
similar  missiles  from  each  end  of  the  defile ;  but  an 
ambuscade  of  sharp-shooters  at  the  top  of  the  preci- 
pice, and  a  body  of  men  with  crow-bars  to  topple 
down  loose  fragments  of  the  crag  on  the  invaders' 
heads,  would  have  been  all  sufficient  for  the  bloody 
work. 

Early  in  the  afternoon  we  reached  another  small 
affluent  of  the  Great  Salt  Lake  known  as  Weber 
River,  and  thenceforward  our  course  lay  through  a 
region  very  different  from  any  we  had  been  travelling 
since  we  left  Denver,  indeed,  since  we  left  the  Mis- 
souri itself. 

We  had  entered  the  area  of  Mormon  conquests. 
Thus  far  this  strange  people  had  crowded  back 
against  the  mountains,  desolation,  sterility,  and  pov- 
erty. With  a  delight  no  words  can  paint,  no  heart 
can  feel  save  that  of  a  traveller  who  for  a  thousand 
miles  has  seen  the  earth  beneath  his  feet  an  almost 
unbroken  ashen  gray,  or  burnt  brown,  did  we  look 
out  upon  a  boundless  scope  of  living  green  —  green 
grass,  green  grain-fields,  green  gardens — cool,  fresh, 
and  tender  as  New  England  meadow-land  in  June. 
The  great  sleek  oxen  and  the  mild-eyed  cows  were 
browsing  lazily,  up  to  their  bellies  in  verdure.  The 
rye  and  wheat  were  so  packed  by  their  luxuriance, 
that  to  us,  looking  down  on  them  from  a  crag  of  the 
defile,  their  tops  seemed  almost  like  a  solid  turf,  but 
for  the  faint  wind  that  sent  waves  of  shadow  over 
them,  chasing  waves  of  light.  Five  minutes  had  suf- 
ficed to  bring  about  the  greatest  visual  contrast  of 
our  lives.  Sterility,  savage  gloom,  death,  or  the  even 
deeper  death  of  never  having  yet  been  born, — these 


THE  APPROACH  TO   SALT  LAKE  CITY.          303 

were  the  burden  of  Nature's  chant  among  the  crags 
not  a  mile  behind  us ;  now  she  reveled  like  a  Bac- 
chante singing  the  joys  of  corn,  and  wine,  and  oil,  or 
better  yet,  crowned  with  plumes  of  harvest,  came  as 
the  matronly  Ceres,  leading  by  her  little  berry-stained 
fingers  the  young  Pomona,  with  prophetic  orchard 
blossoms  wreathed  about  her  sunny  hair,  both  singing 
with  the  stately  bard  of  old,  "  The  wilderness  and  the 
solitary  place  shall  be  glad  for  them ;  and  the  desert 
shall  rejoice  and  blossom  as  the  rose." 

The  beneficent  cause  of  all  this  luxuriance  was  as 
silent  about  itself  as  divine  charity.  But  we  knew, 
here  and  there  we  could  see,  the  canals  with  their 
innumerable  smaller  channels  of  irrigation  which  ram- 
ified over  the  whole  field,  hiding  their  bounty  under 
the  stalwart  stalks,  and  juicy  blades,  and  plump  ripen- 
ing ears  whose  roots  they  nourished.  To  the  unstud- 
ied observer,  him  to  whom  all  sand  is  the  same,  the 
witness  of  his  eyes  seems  incredible.  The  soil  of  that 
wonderful  harvest  field  must  be  like  this  which  blows 
in  our  faces  from  the  shifting  dunes  at  our  side ;  yet 
this  is  sand.  True,  but  it  is  also  one  of  the  richest 
soils  in  the  world ;  for  it  is  the  detritus  of  rocks  which, 
without  exaggeration,  the  scientific  man  might  choose 
to  call  baked  fertilizers.  We  have  made  our  soup,  our 
stove-polish,  even  our  fuel,  into  blocks;  so  we  may 
have  blocks  of  condensed  soil.  Piled  up  into  crags 
till  we  want  them,  they  make  excellent  scenery ;  the 
weather  grinds  them  down,  and  spreads  them  over  our 
grain  fields  and  kitchen  gardens ;  by  and  by  they  are 
as  good  dinner  as  they  were  scenery.  There  is  no 
lad  soil  in  the  world.  There  are  incomplete  soils, — 
soils  that  say,  "  I'll  advance  all  the  silex  you  want,  all 
the  lime,  or  all  the  potash,  only  you  must  get  the 


304       THE  HEART  OF  THE  CONTINENT. 

aluminum."  But  Utah  soil  need  hardly  be  defended 
in  this  category.  As  yet  it  needs  no  manure,  scarcely 
any  top-dressing,  unless  as  a  mulch  to  guard  against 
excessive  evaporation.  All  it  needs  is  water,  and  how 
to  get  that  is  the  plain  problem  which  engages  the 
Mormon  farmer  day  and  night ;  not  so  complicated 
a  problem  as  presents  itself  to  many  a  New  England 
agriculturist,  but  making  up  for  its  slight  draft  on 
skill  by  a  tremendous  call  on  industry.  The  Utah 
farmer  must  woo  the  very  snow-peaks,  and  through 
them  the  clear,  unanswering  heavens,  which  smile  on 
his  starvation,  until  he  makes  the  mountain-top  his 
mediator,  and  builds  a  channel  from  the  edge  of  the 
eternal  ice  to  his  own  acres,  that  the  bounty  of  the 
sky  may  not  pay  too  large  a  commission  to  his  sub- 
lime go-between  by  leakage  on  the  way.  None  but 
the  Mormon  himself  can  tell  you  what  miles  of 
patiently  constructed  troughing,  and  piping,  and 
ditching  are  expressed  in  those  glorious  green  acres 
which,  like  the  finest  things  in  a  picture,  seem  the 
easiest  done  because  the  artist  spent  his  sweat,  and 
blood,  and  very  soul  in  giving  them  the  look  which 
hides  his  great  struggles  forever. 

It  was  nearly  sundown  when  we  stopped  to  change 
horses  at  Kimb all's,  twenty-nine  miles  from  Salt  Lake 
City,  and  the  last  station  but  one  between  us  and  the 
capital  of  the  Saints.  Hitherto  during  the  afternoon 
I  had  found  the  beauty  of  the  world's  newly  re- 
covered green  somewhat  marred  by  the  absence  of 
the  highest  element  in  life's  comfort,  and  the  dearest 
stimulus  to,  as  well  as  resting-place  from,  life's  in- 
dustries. I  looked  for  it  steadily,  yet  found  it  never. 
The  chickens  had  coops;  the  stock  had  its  corrals,  and 
stables,  and  pens ;  the  very  grass  and  grain  were  com- 


THE   APPROACH  TO   SALT  LAKE   CITY.          305 

ing  in  at  last  from  the  heat  and  burden  of  their  day, 
to  rest  and  shelter  in  substantial  barns.  But  for  them 
who  toiled  that  these  might  thrive,  for  whom  these 
lived,  and  moved,  and  had  their  being,  —  the  men,  the 
women,  and  the  children, — what  had  they  to  come  to? 
I  looked  about  me  over  the  green  fields,  carefully, 
wonderingly,  everywhere,  and  found  houses  in  plenty, 
but  no  home. 

Not  that  the  material  was  lacking.  Some  of  the 
houses  were  excellent  snug  specimens  of  the  adobe ; 
others  were  neat  structures  of  wood ;  scarcely  any 
gave  outward  sign  of  poverty,  shiftlessness,  or  un- 
neatness  in  their  occupants.  The  dejection  which 
they  produced  in  me,  their  utter  un-homelikeness, 
proceeded  almost  wholly  from  negative  causes.  They 
looked  like  mere  sleeping  and  eating  places.  The 
spirit  which  raises  the  human  habitation  above  the 
grade  of  the  marmot's  burrow,  the  fox's  cover,  or  the 
bear's  den — the  spirit  without  which  a  palace  is  no 
better  than  these — was  utterly  absent,  —  not  gone, 
for  it  never  had  been. 

When  the  quantity  of  houses  within  the  same  in- 
closure  increased,  the  quality  decreased  proportion- 
ally. I  saw  little  red-headed,  tow-headed,  black-haired 
children  tumbling  together  in  promiscuous  heaps, 
rolling  on  the  unsodded  ground  of  the  same  door- 
yard,  while  a  couple  of  women  were  sitting  listlessly 
on  different  porches,  watching  their  play,  calling  to 
them  in  shrill  accents,  yet  seeming  to  ignore  each 
other  entirely.  No  house  had  its  pretty  little  garden- 
patch  in  front  of  it.  No  flower-beds  testified  to  the 
pride  which  wifely  hands  took  in  making  the  house, 
whither  a  lover  brought  them  home,  the  delightful 
and  longed-for  nest  which  means  earthly  heaven  to 
20 


306       THE  HEART  OF  THE  CONTINENT. 

the  matured  husband.  There  was  no  indication  any- 
where of  keeping  the  marriage  wine,  yielded  by  the 
clusters  of  maidenhood,  from  turning  into  the  vinegar 
of  that  wretched  self-deception,  "  the  steady  old  mar- 
ried people's"  condition.  No  climbing  rose  stretched 
its  arms  over  the  gable  to  fling  bouquets  and  perfumed 
dew  into  the  second-story  window.  Around  the  porch- 
pillars,  where  such  there  were,  nestled  no  honey- 
suckle, no  columbine,  no  Wisteria,  nor  cypress,  nor 
morning  glory,  nor  madeira,  nor  trumpet  vine.  What 
unvarying  betrayal  of  the  house's  inside  is  always 
given,  clear  as  speech,  by  these  lovely  dumb  out- 
siders !  While  you  listen  and  assent  to  them,  there 
she  stands,  turning  their  tendrils  about  her  finger, 
with  as  delicate  lovingness  as  if  they  were  her  own 
soft  curls,  and  she  standing  before  a  toilet  whose 
true  tale  makes  her  modesty  blush  with  joy  because 
it  is  almost  tea-time,  and  he  is  coming.  There  is  no 
need  she  should  be  here  with  her  tender  little  prun- 
ings,  her  dexterous  persuasions  of  the  wayward  shoot, 
her  fond  help  of  the  right  twisting  one;  for  the  caress 
she  gave  her  pets  yesterday  is  still  gratefully  remem- 
bered by  them,  and  they  tell  of  her  in  ways  unmis- 
takable. The  very  bees,  for  whom  she  has  made  an 
emerald  spiral  stair  up  to  a  seventh  heaven  of  bless- 
edness among  the  nectaries,  croon  about  her  as  they 
drink  honey  from  goblets  of  alabaster,  and  gold,  and 
ruby,  and  empurpled  crystal,  saying,  "There's  a 
woman  within!  there's  a  woman  within!"  Yes,  in- 
deed! who  else?  The  husband  puts  his  name  on  a 
silvered  copper-plate  —  great,  gross,  mechanical,  pur- 
chasable thing,  which  you  might  melt  down  to  make 
pennies,  or  stair-rods,  or  andirons;  the  wife  writes 
hers  in  God's  live  letters  that  grow,  not  get  shaved 


THE   APPROACH  TO    SALT  LAKE   CITY.          307 

and  jointed  into  sentences,  on  the  lattice  of  a  shady 
veranda.  And  when  she  is  gone, — look  at  the  vines 
and  the  flower-beds, —  then  there  is  no  need  of  crape 
on  the  door-knob.  As  they  wilt,  the  bees  come  again: 
"  There's  no  woman  within  — no  woman  —  no  woman 
within  any  more/' 

The  nearest  approach  to  the  New  England  stand- 
ard which  I  saw  in  Utah,  was  Kimball's,  the  next  sta- 
tion but  one,  as  I  have  said,  to  Salt  Lake  City.  The 
driver  promised  to  be  as  long  as  possible  in  changing 
horses,  that  I  might  seek  admission  to  the  house  —  a 
cozy  white  cottage,  low,  broad,  and  roomy,  with  those 
architectural  after-thoughts,  known  as  wings  and  lean- 
tos,  which  mark  the  increase  of  family  and  prosperity 
as  the  growth  of  a  tree  has  its  memorandum  in  the 
rings  of  its  bark.  This  admission  I  sought,  not  from 
any  desire  to  take  Time  by  the  forelock  in  my  explora- 
tion of  the  Mormon's  domestic  concerns,  but  because 
the  house  looked  like  one  where  I  could  get  bread 
and  milk.  Its  outside  had  a  promise  of  scoured  white- 
oak  shelves  within ;  of  dazzling  pans,  golden  cream, 
and  snowy  loaves. 

My  knock  at  the  door  was  answered  with  an  imme- 
diate "  Come  in  ! "  I  found  myself  in  a  sunny,  low- 
ceiled  sitting-room,  where  a  fine-looking  matrdn, 
somewhere  in  her  well-preserved  fifties,  sat  talking  to 
a  pair  of  very  tidy  and  prepossessing  young  women, 
both  under  twenty-five,  and  each  holding  a  healthy 
baby. 

I  frankly  stated  my  case  at  once.  I  was  an  Over- 
land traveller  who  had  lived  on  cured  provisions  and 
hard-tack  so  long  that  a  slice  of  fresh  bread  and  but- 
ter, with  a  bowl  of  sweet  "morning's  milk,"  unde- 
nuded  of  the  cream,  would  not  only  insure  my  grat- 


308  THE  HEART  OF  THE  CONTINENT. 

itude,  but  the  regular  market  price,  left  to  their  own 
quotation. 

The  matronly  lady  instantly  arose  and  went  to  the 
dairy  closet.  The  material  for  my  satisfaction  was 
before  me  in  a  few  seconds,  with  the  snowiest  of  dam- 
ask towels  beneath  it.  I  felt  new  life  with  every  bite 
and  table-spoonful.  I  felt  the  dust  washed  out  of  me, 
body  and  soul.  A  still  further  freshening  occurred  to 
me  as  I  looked  at  these  pretty  young  mothers  and 
their  babies.  I  made  up  a  pretty  little  idyl  about 
them.  The  mothers  were  former  school  acquaint- 
ances—  cousins — something  of  that  sort.  They  had 
been  married  about  the  same  time ;  by  a  pleasant 
turn  of  Fortune's  wheel  they  had  been  brought  to  be 
near  neighbors  in  the  same  settlement;  and  now,  as  I 
had  seen  at  the  East  so  often,  one  of  the  pretty  young 
mothers  had  run  in  to  match  babies  with  the  other, 
and  prattle  out  their  hearts'  sweet  foolishness  with- 
out risk  of  being  misunderstood — talking  lovely  rig- 
maroles of  baby-talk  to  their  "ittle  pessus  tittens" 
with  fullest  sympathy  from  each  other  and  benignant 
grandma. 

The  sight  of  them,  after  six  hundred  miles  of  ster- 
ile ice  and  stone,  exhilarated  me  like  a  generous  ladle- 
ful  of  punch.  "  Those  are  very  pretty  babies  ! "  said 
I,  addressing  the  matron  in  all  sincerity  of  heart. 

"  Yes,  I  think  so,"  she  replied ;  "  but  you  must 
allow  for  a  grandmother's  partiality." 

I  replied  that  no  such  allowance  was  necessary  to 
me,  and  continued,  "These  young  ladies  are  your 
daughters,  then  ?  " 

"  They  are  my  daughters-in-law,  sir,"  returned  the 
fine-looking  matron. 

"  So  you  have  both  your  sons  and  their  wives  with 


THE   APPROACH   TO    SALT  LAKE  CITY.          309 

you  ?  Indeed,  you  are  to  be  envied,  with  such  a  de- 
lightful home  about  you  in  other  respects." 

"  These  babies,  sir,"  answered  the  matron  gravely, 
"are  the  children  of  my  son,  now  abroad  on  the 
Lord's  business — my  son,  Mr.  Kimball,  after  whom 
this  place  is  called.  These  young  ladies  are  his  wives, 
and  I  am  the  first  wife  of  one  you  have  often  ere  this 
heard  of  in  the  States,  —  Heber  Kimball,  second  Presi- 
dent, and  next  to  our  prophet  Brigham  Young  in  the 
government  of  Utah." 

Why  should  I  blush  ?  Nobody  else  did.  The  ba- 
bies crowed  as  they  were  tossed  ceiling-ward  in  the 
maternal  fashion,  not  even  paying  the  Gentile  in- 
truder the  compliment  of  getting  scared  by  him. 
The  young  mothers  had  heard  the  whole  conversa- 
tion; yet  Eve  before  the  fall  could  not  have  been 
more  innocent  of  shame.  Mrs.  Heber  Kimball  showed 
no  sign  of  knowing  that  I  could  be  surprised  by  any- 
thing she  told  me.  Yet  I,  a  cosmopolitan,  a  man  of 
the  world,  liberal  to  other  people's  habits  and  opin- 
ions to  a  degree  which  had  often  subjected  me  to 
censure  among  strictarians  in  the  Eastern  States, 
blushed  to  my  very  temples,  and  had  to  retire  into 
the  privacy  of  my  tipped  milk-bowl  to  screen  the 
struggle  by  which  I  restored  my  moral  equipoise.  I 
was  beyond  measure  provoked  at  myself.  Ever  since 
we  left  Green  Kiver  I  had  known  I  was  in  Utah.  I 
had  been  thinking  about  Mormon  peculiarities  all  day 
long;  yet  the  first  apparition  to  my  senses  of  that 
which  had  absorbed  my  intellect,  took  me  entirely 
aback ! 

If  the  three  observed  my  confusion,  they  had  suffi- 
cient tact  not  to  show  it.  I  think  that  Mrs.  Heber 
Kimball  the  first  must  undoubtedly  have  understood 


310       THE  HEART  OF  THE  CONTINENT. 

my  position,  and  that  the  plain  straightforward 
statement  which  she  made,  was  for  the  purpose  of 
landing  me  at  one  throw  in  the  midst  of  polygamic 
ideas.  She  did  not  ask  my  name  ;  made  no  inquiries 
regarding  my  companions,  who  were  stretching  their 
legs  outside  of  the  cottage  gate,  rejecting  all  invita- 
tions on  my  part  to  come  in  and  share  my  bread  and 
milk  with  me.  She  was  kind  and  pleasantly  inter- 
ested in  my  well-being  to  the  extent  of  this  provision, 
but  as  nonchalant  of  whatever  spirit  I  might  cherish 
toward  Utah  as  one  can  well  imagine.  Without  the 
least  braggadocio  or  offensive  protrusion  of  our  mu- 
tual and  radical  differences,  she  nevertheless  set  me 
at  once  upon  the  true  basis,  and  let  me  know  that 
polygamy  was  the  law  of  the  land  where  I  now  trod, 
and  she  and  her  own  as  firm  in  the  faith  as  I  in  mo- 
nogamy, without  anything  more  to  be  ashamed  of  in 
her  creed  than  the  Yicar  of  Wakefield  or  Horace 
Greeley  in  theirs. 

Had  I  never  seen  anything  more  of  polygamy  than 
I  met  here,  I  should  have  gone  my  way  feeling  puz- 
zled as  to  whether  the  system  might  not  have  pos- 
sessed a  certain  advantage  for  people  arrived  at  one 
particular  stage  of  civilization,  akin  to  that  which  it 
bestowed  upon  the  Old  Testament  Jews.  I  had  no 
doubt  that  it  would  be  a  frightfully  retrograde  step 
for  the  society  whence  I  came,  but  that  decided  noth- 
ing in  regard  to  these  Mormons.  On  the  ladder  of 
civilization,  round  number  two  would  be  degradation 
to  the  foot  planted  on  number  three ;  but  it  would  be 
as  great  an  elevation  to  the  stander  on  number  one. 

Mrs.  Heber  Kimball  the  first,  though  rapidly  near- 
ing  her  grand  climacteric,  was  the  finest-looking 
woman  whom  I  saw  in  Utah.  In  the  Highlands  of 


THE   APPROACH  TO   SALT  LAKE  CITY.          311 

Scotland  she  might  have  been  Helen  McGregor ;  in 
Palmyra,  Zenobia ;  in  France,  Joan  of  Arc.  She  was 
considerably  above  woman's  middle  size ;  her  hair, 
slightly  grizzled,  was  dressed  neatly  back  beneath  a 
plain,  snow-white  cap ;  her  figure  was  erect,  and  the 
embodiment  of  strength  and  endurance;  her  eyes, 
which  seemed  a  bluish  gray,  were  fearless,  and  looked 
straightforward ;  her  mouth  was  almost  masculine  in 
its  firmness ;  her  nose  a  finely  cut  aristocratic  Eoman ; 
her  manner  perfectly  self-poised,  replete  with  influen- 
tial and  winning  dignity,  and  expressive  of  a  powerful 
will,  strong  for  the  control  of  her  own  faculties,  as 
well  as  the  whole  nature  of  other  people ;  her  voice 
pleasant,  yet  commanding;  her  general  expression 
that  of  pride  without  self-consciousness,  and  courage 
untainted  by  braggadocio.  She  was  a  woman  to  make 
you  stop  and  look  back  after  her  in  a  crowded  thor- 
oughfare ;  she  would  have  arrested  your  attention 
anywhere,  on  Broadway,  the  Strand,  or  the  most 
thronged  portion  of  the  Parisian  Boulevards.  I  did 
not  wonder  when,  days  afterwards,  in  talking  with 
her  husband,  who  knew  nothing  of  my  previous  meet- 
ing with  her, — since  she  was  only  visiting  her  daugh- 
ters-in-law at  the  time  I  saw  her, — Heber  Kimball 
told  me  that  not  only  in  time,  but  in  ability,  she  was 
the  very  first  of  his  wives — the  wife  to  whom  he 
most  deferred,  and  in  whose  wisdom  he  had  the  most 
implicit  confidence.  I  was  fully  prepared  for  that  as- 
sertion ;  but  I  confess  that  my  credulity  was  at  first 
nearly  staggered,  when  I  heard  that  her  conversion 
to  Mormonism  was  prior  to  her  husband's,  and  that,  in 
plain  terms,  he  was  her  convert  to  all  the  tenets  of  Joe 
Smith  and  the  later  dogma  of  polygamy — last  of  all 
conceivable  doctrines  for  whose  championship  you 


312       THE  HEART  OF  THE  CONTINENT. 

would  think  of  looking  to  a  wife !  Paradoxical  as 
this  assertion  may  be,  I  have  repeatedly  heard  it 
made  among  Mormons,  yet  never  with  the  faintest 
hint  at  a  denial.  Indeed,  the  style  of  her  few  short 
sentences  addressed  to  me  seemed  to  show  that  she 
gloried  in  it. 

After  my  recovery  behind  the  charitable  shelter  of 
the  milk-bowl,  I  could  not  succeed  in  disciplining  my 
mind  as  thoroughly  as  I  had  my  face.  That  poor 
monogamic  brain  of  mine  kept  pondering  and  dream- 
ing as  if  it  were  dazed.  How  could  those  pretty 
young  women  sit  and  look  at  each  other's  babies  — 
both  of  nearly  the  same  age ;  hear  the  matron  talk 
of  the  youthful  apostle  to  the  Gentiles  now  gathering 
in  the  elect  from  foreign  parts ;  see,  each  in  the  op- 
posite infant,  the  plain  apostolic  seal  stamped  on  its 
little  countenance,  —  yet  rock  away  so  cheerfully  and 
talk  baby  Latin  so  blithely ;  be-sister  each  other,  and 
give  mutual  advice  about  the  cut  of  long  clothes, 
or  the  management  of  teething  ?  Heavens !  What 
strange  unsexing  operation  must  their  souls  have 
gone  through  to  keep  them  from  frenzy — murder — 
suicide  ?  I  afterward  put  this  question  to  their  father- 
in-law,  Heber  the  first,  and  his  terse,  all-conclusive 
explanation  was,  "Triumph  o'  grace." 

I  know  that  conscience  is  mostly  custom,  that  taste 
is  training,  and  shame  the  sense  of  being  singular. 
Still  I  confess  that  my  imagination's  utmost  stretch 
falls  short  of  realizing  how  that  double  pair,  baby 
and  mother,  can  sit  vis-a-vis  all  day  long,  and  not  feel 
hate,  horror,  hell  itself  striving  somewhere  in  their 
depths !  I  ache  as  I  look  at  them ;  for  it  seems  as 
if  those  breasts  which  suckle  the  babies,  must  suffer 
such  frightful  tension  as  sometimes,  instead  of  whole- 
some human  milk,  to  yield  gall  and  blood ! 


THE  APPROACH  TO  SALT  LAKE   CITY.  313 

I  should  have  felt  relieved  if  those  two  pretty  young 
girls  of  a  sudden  had  leaped  up  and  fired  their  babies 
at  each  other's  heads,  pounced  upon  each  other  with 
a  tigrine  spring,  seamed  each  other's  faces  with  re- 
lentless nails,  tore  hair,  gouged  eyes,  bit,  maimed, 
killed !  Then  would  they  have  shown  decidedly  less 
grace,  but  considerably  more  humanity.  The  saints 
would  have  evaporated,  but  in  their  places  would  be 
women. 

I  meant  to  say  just  what  I  have  written;  so  I  felt 
glad  that  these  charming,  kindly,  self- crucify  ing  crea- 
tures offered  not  the  slightest  objection  to  my  paying 
a  quarter  for  my  bowl  of  milk  and  buttered  slice.  I 
never  belonged  to  that  class  who  believe  a  good  din- 
ner equivalent  to  a  contract  to  lie  for  the  flattery  of 
one's  host.  Truth  always,  on  my  time-table,  has  the 
right  of  way  over  turbot. 

After  leaving  Kimball's,  we  rode  a  distance  of  twen- 
ty-nine miles  through  a  continuation  of  the  widening 
gallery  which  had  hitherto  led  us  through  the  Wah- 
satch,  stopping  about  midway  at  Mountain  Dell,  where 
a  beautiful  stream  ran  crystal-clear  to  unite  its  waters 
with  the  Salt  Lake  Basin,  and  where  I  had  time  to 
take  the  first  invigorating  plunge  which  I  had  en- 
joyed since  leaving  Denver.  This  description  of  the 
refreshing  bath  is  perhaps  rather  too  conventional 
and  rhapsodic ;  for  my  action  was  a  much  sedater  one, 
and  consisted  in  lying  down  and  having  the  dust 
washed  from  my  parched  body  by  a  flow  of  deliciously 
pure  water,  two  or  three  feet  deep  above  the  pebbly 
bottom. 

I  found  the  effect  of  the  bath  so  sedative  that  I  en- 
joyed, after  returning  to  my  seat,  the  first  unbroken 
sleep  I  had  known  in  several  days. 


314       THE  HEART  OF  THE  CONTINENT. 

I  was  awakened  by  my  companions  to  enjoy  the 
weird  picturesqueness  of  a  fire  kindled  by  camping 
emigrants,  and  flashing  its  spectral  light  upon  a  fine 
perpendicular  precipice  of  white  granite,  just  as  we 
broke  through  the  western  face  of  the  Wahsatch,  and 
came  to  the  head  of  the  foot-hills  from  which  the  vast 
basin  of  the  Lake  is  for  the  first  time  visible,  with  the 
embowered  City  of  the  Saints  sleeping  at  the  bottom 
of  its  vast  cradle. 

Under  a  vague  mysterious  moonlight  we  whirled  of 
a  sudden  among  the  adobe  houses  and  the  shadowy 
streets  of  Brigham's  capital.  Going  at  once  to  the 
only  hotel  of  the  town,  in  fifteen  minutes,  and  with 
our  piles  of  Eastern  letters  unread,  we  were,  for  the 
first  time  in  six  days  and  "nights,  as  soundly  asleep  as 
Epimenides. 


CHAPTER  VH. 

THE  NEW  JERUSALEM. 

THE  original  sense  in  which  I  use  the  title  to  this 
chapter  will  be  defended  as  I  proceed.  I  certainly  do 
not  bestow  the  name  of  New  Jerusalem  upon  the 
Mormon  capital  because  of  its  bearing  any  resem- 
blance to  the  city  of  the  disembodied  saints. 

Among  th6  many  courtesies  extended  our  party  by 
Mr.  Holladay  and  others  connected  with  the  Overland 
road  was  a  letter  from  Mr.  Center,  commending  us  to 
the  attention  of  Mr.  Rumfield,  representative  of  the 
Wells -Fargo  interest  at  Salt  Lake  City.  Through 
this  gentleman  we  made  the  acquaintance  of  Mr. 
Stein,  then  Mr.  Holladay's  agent  at  the  same  place, 
and  since  occupying  an  important  position  as  manager 
of  one  of  that  great  stage-man's  new  lines,  for  which 
he  is  eminently  fitted  by  a  grade  of  business  talents 
and  indefatigable  industry  seldom  met  with  at  the 
East  or  West. 

These  gentlemen  formed  the  capital  of  acquaint- 
anceship upon  which  we  began  business  in  Utah.  To 
them  we  owe  innumerable  and  peculiar  facilities  for 
the  study  of  Salt  Lake  City,  its  scenery,  its  people, 
and  its  usages,  though  they  are  responsible  for  none 
of  my  opinions. 

The  Salt  Lake  Hotel,  where  we  stopped,  is  the  only 
one  frequented  by  Gentiles ;  indeed,  the  only  one  which 
claims  any  position  corresponding  to  the  hotels  at  the 
East.  It  is  a  good -sized  house  of  two  stories  in  height, 


316      THE  HEART  OF  THE  CONTINENT. 

with  broad  verandas  on  its  fagade.  Our  rooms  opened 
upon  the  upper  one,  and  thence  we  had  a  fine  view 
of  the  principal  street. 

The  peculiarities  of  Mormonism  are  not  external ; 
and  a  traveller  merely  seeing  the  city  in  tramitu,  must 
be  disappointed  of  the  keen,  fresh  sensation  which 
people  expect  in  visiting  the  centre  of  the  most  re- 
markable social  system  in  Christendom. 

The  hotel  we  found  to  differ  in  no  important  re- 
spect from  the  well  kept,  homely  tavern  of  any  quiet 
Eastern  village.  Tourists  fortunate  enough  to  have 
received  their  first  impressions  of  Gredn  Mountain 
scenery  before  Vermont  began  to  be  crossed  by  its 
net-work  of  iron  rails,  used  to  see  a  very  similar  tav- 
ern on  their  way  over  the  magnificent  stage  road 
from  Troy  to  Kutland,  when  they  halted  for  dinner 
the  first  day  out  at  "  Love's,'*  in  Bennington.  Town- 
send,  who  keeps  the  Salt  Lake  Hotel,  is  a  gruff  but 
obliging  man,  between  fifty  and  sixty.  It  never  oc- 
curred to  me  that  he  was  a  Saint  until  Heber  Kim- 
ball  called  him  "  brother ; "  and  the  unobtrusiveness 
of  polygamy  at  its  very  head-quarters  may  be  inferred 
from  the  fact  that  a  week  elapsed  before  it  occurred 
to  me  that  the  industrious  old  lady  who  gave  us  such 
nice  little  dishes  of  hot  scrambled  eggs,  and  made  us 
fresh  coffee  when  we  came  down  late  to  breakfast  was 
one  Mrs.  Townsend,  and  a  younger  woman  who  took 
such  good  care  of  our  rooms  was  another. 

The  only  peculiarity  of  the  hotel  was  its  lack  of  a 
bar-room ;  and  with  this  few  people  obliged  to  make 
any  protracted  stay  at  a  Western  hotel  will  be  dis- 
posed to  quarrel.  The  deficiency  was  a  guarantee  of 
quiet  nights  and  orderly  days.  From  sunrise  till  sun- 
set the  long  line  of  tie-posts  in  front  of  Townsend's 


THE  NEW  JERUSALEM.  317 

was  studded  with  hardy  little  mustangs,  whose  sun- 
browned  riders  were  refreshing  themselves  within, 
or  transacting  business  without;  and  until  a  late  hour 
of  the  night  (always  till  the  Overland  stage  arrived 
from  the  East),  the  verandas  were  occupied  by  gen- 
tlemen smoking  and  chatting  in  their  easy-chairs; 
but  never  was  the  seemly  order  of  the  establishment 
broken  by  any  approach  to  a  row,  or  even  by  vocif- 
erous discussion. 

The  dining-room  was  lively  and  bustling  for  a 
couple  of  hours  from  the  bell- ringing  of  each  meal, 
fresh  relays  of  guests  occupying  vacated  seats  as  fast 
as  one  battalion  of  dishes  could  be  cleared  from  the 
field,  and  a  fresh  one  brought  into  position.  Town- 
send  was  largely  patronized  by  both  ladies  and  gen- 
tlemen ;  but  neither  among  permanent  nor  transient 
guests  was  there  anything  to  suggest  the  existence 
of  peculiar  social  customs,  had  we  not  already  been 
aware  of  it. 

The  main  street,  which  ran  in  front  of  the  hotel, 
was  splendidly  broad,  —  in  this  respect  not  surpassed 
by  the  widest  portion  of  Pennsylvania  Avenue.  Its 
architecture  was  nothing  to  boast  of,  being  that  of  a 
town  whose  citizens  are  still  in  the  first  stage  of  do- 
ing, and  have  not  yet  reached  the  second  one  of  con- 
sidering how  to  do.  The  shops  were  consistent  with 
the  hotel,  and  like  it  might  have  been  transported 
from  the  principal  street  of  any  prosperous  Eastern 
village.  There  were  some  brick,  some  wooden,  and 
numerous  adobe  houses,  generally  two  stories  in 
height,  and  without  decoration.  The  commercial 
fronts  displayed  their  wares  through  no  ambitious 
plates  of  French  glass,  but  announced  them  on  shin- 
gles or  handbills,  and  by  the  still  more  straightfor- 


318       THE  HEART  OF  THE  CONTINENT. 

ward  method  of  samples  at  the  door-way.  All  the 
ordinary  trades  were  represented,  but  there  seemed 
to  be  the  usual  country  fondness  for  miscellaneous 
traffic  within  one  inclosure ;  the  house-furnishing 
business,  inclusive  of  groceries,  shoes,  hardware,  all, 
indeed,  that  one  would  look  for  in  the  "  country 
store  "  par  excellence,  being  a  favorite  and  well  pat- 
ronized kind  of  commerce.  The  milliner  and  dress- 
maker had  their  separate  sanctuaries,  as  one  finds  all 
over  the  civilized  world,  but  possessed  no  such  prom- 
inence as  they  might  naturally  be  supposed  to  occupy 
in  Utah.  It  was  evident  that  polygamy  and  gynoc- 
racy  are  terms  by  no  means  convertible.  The  vast 
scale  of  shopping  prevalent  in  Gentile  communities 
is  the  grand  guarantee  and  safeguard  of  monogamy. 
Brigham  Young  is  undoubtedly  the  richest  man  in 
the  Western  Hemisphere,  even  richer  perhaps  than 
any  single  member  of  the  Rothschild  family ;  but 
were  his  milliner's  and  mantua-maker's  bills  to  be 
calculated  on  the  basis  of  a  single-wived  establish- 
ment at  the  East,  even  his  exchequer  might  be  ex- 
cused for 'coming  to  bankruptcy.  From  my  observa- 
tion of  Mormon  sumptuary  habits,  I  should  suppose 
that  the  budget  of  a  polygamic  household  was  made 
up  on  the  principle  of  dividing  one  normal  and  East- 
ern wife's  allowance  among  a  multitude,  instead  of 
multiplying  it  by  the  number  of  the  harem.  The 
philosopher  acquainted  with  the  underlying  motive 
of  most  marriages  in  society  will  find  no  insuperable 
difficulty  in  understanding  how  a  given  number  of 
wives  can  consent  to  receive  the  fraction  of  a  man 
apiece ;  but  when  it  comes  to  dividing  the  pin-money, 
he  beholds  an  eternal  obstacle  to  the  spread  of  polyg- 
amic ideas  among  the  higher  classes  of  society. 


THE  NEW  JERUSALEM.  319 

I  was  struck  by  the  rarity  of  doctors'  and  lawyers' 
shingles  in  the  principal  street  of  Salt  Lake  City. 
The  former  deficiency  is  easily  accounted  for.  There 
are  few  more  healthful  localities  on  the  Continent 
than  this.  In  the  immediate  neighborhood  of  the 
Great  Salt  Lake,  fogs  are  frequent  and  obstinate.  The 
only  escape  of  such  a  vast  body  of  water  being  air- 
ward,  the  evaporation  constantly  going  on  beneath 
an  unclouded  sun  necessarily  keeps  the  atmosphere 
overladen  with  moisture.  But  the  shores  of  the  lake 
are  almost  as  unsettled  as  when  the  Mormons  first 
came  to  the  Territory.  The  nearest  point  of  the 
shore  (Black  Rock)  is  twenty  miles  distant  from  the 
city;  and  although  the  temperature  of  the  latter  must 
be  to  a  certain  extent  modified  by  the  lake  fogs,  dur- 
ing the  summer  at  least,  they  do  not  manifest  them- 
selves in  the  city  as  unpleasantly  perceptible  moist- 
ure. The  outskirts  of  the  city  along  the  river  Jordan 
are  in  some  places  overflowed  and  boggy;  within  five 
miles  of  it  are  a  number  of  large  thermal  springs ;  yet 
the  people  seem  troubled  by  no  malaria,  nor  by  the 
endemic  diseases  which  arise  from  it. 

The  vital  intertexture  of  social,  religious,  and  civil 
polity  resulting  from  the  Mormon  system,  would  well- 
nigh  do  away  altogether  with  the  profession  of  the 
attorney  and  counselor,  but  for  the  fact  that  the 
United  States  Government  still  claims  territorial  ju- 
risdiction in  Utah.  The  Federal  authority  is  nom- 
inally paramount,  but  one  fact  must  always  operate 
to  nullify  it  for  all  practical  purposes.  The  United 
States  courts  may  get  their  judges  from  any  portion 
of  the  Union  at  our  Chief  Magistrate's  discretion,  but 
their  juries  must  always  be  impaneled  from  among 
the  Mormons  themselves.  The  Gentile,  resident  in 


320       THE  HEART  OF  THE  CONTINENT. 

or  travelling  through  Utah,  gains  nothing  by  getting 
his  cause  into  the  United  States  courts.  Human  in- 
genuity can  fashion  no  oath  comprehensive  enough 
in  its  form  or  terrible  enough  in  its  sanction  to  bind 
a  Mormon  juryman  to  the  prejudice  of  his  coreligion- 
ist, or  of  the  vast  autocracy  (theocracy  he  calls  it)  by 
whose  favor  he  holds  all  that  is  most  precious  to  him, 
not  only  for  the  life  which  now  is,  but  for  that  which 
is  to  come.  Where  the  matter  in  dispute  is  indiffer- 
ent to  "the  Church"  or  to  any  Mormon  in  it,  the  citizen 
of  Utah  is  as  just  as  another  man.  Under  the  same 
circumstances,  the  Gentile  litigant  may  be  sure  of  jus- 
tice at  Brigham  Young's  own  hands.  Were  I  anxious 
for  speedy  adjustment  of  a  cause  between  myself  and 
any  other  Gentile,  and  confident  of  the  justice  of  my 
own  side,  I  do  not  know  the  referee  in  whose  hands  I 
would  more  gladly  leave  my  interests  than  Brigham 
Young's.  Outside  the  arena  of  his  fanaticism,  he  is 
not  surpassed  in  honesty  of  purpose,  clear-headedness, 
purity  of  motive,  and  justice  of  feeling,  by  any  man 
I  ever  met.  But  rare  indeed  must  be  the  case  in 
which  "  the  Church"  has  not  some  little  fibre  of  in- 
terest, some  trifling  stake  sufficient  to  partialize  the 
referee,  in  a  community  the  boast  of  whose  religious 
polity  is  that  it  interpenetrates  every  relation  of  life, 
and  ramifies  through  every  interest  of  the  proprietor, 
the  citizen,  and  the  man.  The  result  of  this  state  of 
things  is  to  remove  the  whole  amenability  of  private 
conscience,  not  only  from  the  United  States  tribunal 
which  frames  the  oath,  but  from  the  Gentile's  God 
whose  power  forms  its  sanction,  to  the  Church  of  the 
Latter-day  Saints  and  the  incarnation  of  its  divine  au- 
thority in  the  apostle,  prophet,  autocrat,  and  vicar  of 
the  true  God,  Brigham  Young. 


THE  NEW  JERUSALEM.  321 

So  long  as  our  Government  respects  Magna  Charta 
privileges,  and  deals  with  Mormonism  upon  common- 
law  principles  and  a  peace  status,  so  long  will  its 
courts  in  Utah  remain  mere  scarecrows,  known  by 
the  people  to  be  made  of  rags  and  bean-poles.  No 
order  of  court  has  the  slightest  validity ;  no  guber- 
natorial proclamation  even  the  poor  privilege  of  a 
right  to  be  published  and  circulated,  without  the 
indorsement  of  Brigham  Young.  There  is  but  one 
remedy  to  this  condition  of  Federal  powerlessness  — 
the  declaration  of  martial  law  throughout  the  Terri- 
tory. Military  commanders  stationed  in  Utah  have 
repeatedly  urged  this  course  on  the  Washington  Ex- 
ecutive. There  has  been  at  least  one  case  in  which  I 
think  the  prayer  must  have  been  indorsed  by  the 
most  rigorous  theorist  upon  popular  rights  and  con- 
stitutional measures.  But  it  has  never  been  granted. 
The  past  few  years  have  greatly  modified  men's  views 
regarding  the  safety  and  propriety  of  a  recourse,  in 
extreme  exigencies,  to  abnormal  methods.  We  have 
seen  the  rights  of  jury  trial  and  habeas  corpus  sus- 
pended in  emergencies  far  less  imperative  than  sev- 
eral which  have  called  for  that  action  in  Utah.  Still, 
the  reaction  of  feeling  following  our  late  war's  neces- 
sary laxities  will  operate  strongly  against  any  future 
attempt  at  interference  with  the  course  of  civil  law ; 
and  in  any  case,  the  Executive  which  declares  martial 
law  in  Utah  must  occupy  a  position  of  most  weighty 
and  delicate  responsibility.  At  the  same  time,  it  is 
beyond  peradventure  that  whenever  the  United  States 
Government  finds  it  vital  to  make  its  power  felt  as 
paramount  above  that  of  Mormonism,  and  to  do  more 
than  preserve  the  mere  semblance  of  royalty  in  Utah, 
the  only  possible  path  to  such  a  result  is  through  the 
21 


322       THE  HEART  OF  THE  CONTINENT. 

court-martial.  But  I  did  not  mean  to  begin  political 
discussion  so  early  in  my  acquaintance  with  Salt  Lake. 
The  traveller,  coming  into  the  Saints'  City,  either 
from  the  mountain  or  the  desert  side,  finds  much  to 
expand  his  mind  and  rest  his  eyes.  The  breadth  of 
the  streets  is  delightful  to  him  after  squeezing  his 
way  through  the  narrow  defiles  of  the  Wahsatch, — for 
we  judge  of  all  things  relatively,  —  and  the  Mormon 
Boulevards  are  as  broad  for  a  street,  as  the  canons 
are  narrow  for  a  mountain  pass.  By  survey,  all  the 
streets  of  Salt  Lake  City  are  one  hundred  and  thirty- 
two  feet  wide  between  fence  lines.  Twenty  feet  of 
this  width,  on  each  side,  belong  to  the  sidewalk. 
The  blocks,  in  the  thickly  settled  part  of  the  city, 
contain  eight  lots  apiece ;  each  of  these  lots  measur- 
ing one  and  a  quarter  acres  —  a  most  generous  ap- 
portionment for  any  city  proprietor.  The  blocks  front 
alternately  upon  the  streets  running  north  and  south, 
and  those  running  east  and  west.  For  instance,  sup- 
pose us  entering  the  city  by  the  "  Emigration  road," 
—  our  faces  directed  due  westward, — the  lots  belong- 
ing to  the  first  block  on  our  right  front  our  street ; 
those  on  our  left  offer  us  their  sides;  we  cross  the 
first  transverse  street,  and  the  lots  of  the  block  on 
the  left  front  us,  while  we  flank  the  lots  of  the  block 
on  our  right.  An  inconsiderable  portion  of  the  city, 
some  distance  to  the  northward  of  the  Emigration 
road,  contains  blocks  of  four  lots  measuring  two  and 
one-half  acres,  and  five-acre  lots  exist  in  some  other 
blocks  to  the  southward.  The  dwelling-houses,  like 
the  stores,  are  principally  of  adobe,  with  here  and 
there  a  brick  or  wooden  one,  and  an  occasional  build- 
ing, belonging  to  some  more  opulent  Saint,  of  the  gray 
sandstone  or  granite  from  the  canons.  By  a  munici- 


THE  NEW  JERUSALEM.  323 

pal  regulation  the  builder  is  obliged  to  set  his  house 
at  least  twenty  feet  back  from  the  front  fence  of  his 
lot,  and  to  plant  shade-trees  along  his  street  line. 
The  effect  of  this  arrangement,  and  the  lateral  isola- 
tion of  all  dwelling-houses  which  seems  as  strictly 
enjoined,  is  to  give  the  streets  a  dignity  and  gener- 
osity of  appearance  quite  independent  of  architec- 
ture. It  is  but  twenty-three1  years  since  the  advance 
guard  of  the  first  Mormon  expedition  camped  down 
in  the  brush  upon  the  site  of  the  present  flourishing 
and  growing  city,  yet  the  wonderful  industry  and  un- 
daunted faith  of  this  remarkable  people  have  seemed 
to  infuse  their  spirit  into  the  very  trees,  for  the  side- 
walks along  the  front  of  their  court-yards  are  densely 
roofed  avenues  of  living  green ;  the  maple,  the  cotton- 
wood,  the  poplar,  a  species  of  acacia  like  our  honey- 
locust,  seeming  to  have  thriven  apace  wherever  the 
settler's  hand  has  planted  them,  and  at  a  more  rapid 
rate  than  is  anywhere  witnessed  in  the  East. 

Along  the  principal  streets  of  the  city  exist  some 
such  pleasant  exceptions  to  the  dejected  unhomelike- 
ness  which  I  have  heretofore  mentioned,  as  character- 
izing the  grounds  around  Mormon  houses,  that  I 
hasten  with  delight  to  give  them  their  due.  Even 
these  exceptions  are  the  mere  external  symboliza- 
tions  of  that  higher  grade  of  wealth  and  luxury  dis- 
tinguishing all  cities ;  the  gardener's  paid  work,  not 
the  wife's  and  daughter's  sweet  pastime,  save  in  one 
or  two  cases  (those  the  best)  where  a  true  marital  love 
had  kept  a  household,  though  Mormon,  still  mono- 
gamic. 

The  space  between  the  house  and  the  front  fence 
is  managed  according  to  the  means  and  taste  of  the 
proprietor.  In  some  instances,  the  utilitarian  element, 

1  Counting  from  July,  1847. 


324       THE  HEART  OF  THE  CONTINENT. 

being  in  the  ascendant,  has  boldly  brought  the  vege- 
table garden  forward  into  public  notice.  I  like  the 
sturdy  self-assertion  of  those  potatoes,  cabbages,  and 
string-beans.  Why  should  they,  the  preservers  and 
sustainers  of  mankind,  slink  away  into  back  lots,  be- 
hind a  high  board  fence,  and  leave  the  land-holder  to 
be  represented  by  a  set  of  lazy  bouncing-bets  and 
stiff-mannered  hollyhocks,  who  do  nothing  but  prink 
and  dawdle  for  their  living,  —  the  deportment  Turvey- 
drops  of  the  vegetable  kingdom?  Other  front  yards 
are  variegated  in  pretty  patterns  with  naturalized 
flowers — children  of  seed  brought  from  many  coun- 
tries :  here  a  Riga  pink,  which  minds  the  Scandinavian 
wife  of  that  far  off  door-way  around  which  its  ances- 
tors blossomed  in  the  short  Northern  summer  of  the 
Baltic ;  here  a  haw  or  a  holly,  which  speaks  to  the  Eng- 
lish wife  of  yule  and  spring-time,  when  she  got  kissed 
under  the  one  or  followed  her  father  clipping  hedge- 
rows of  the  other ;  shamrock  and  daisies  for  the  Irish 
wife;  fennel — the  real  old  " meetin'-seed "  fennel  — 
for  the  American  wife  ;  and  in  some  places  where  tact, 
ingenuity,  originality,  and  love  of  science  have  blessed 
a  house,  curious  little  alpine  flowers  of  flaAiing  scar- 
let or  royal  purple,  brought  down  from  the  green 
dells  and  lofty  terraces  of  the  snow-range,  to  be 
adopted  and  improved  by  culture.  Of  all  I  liked  best 
a  third  class  of  front  courts,  given  up  to  moist,  home- 
looking  turf-grass,  of  that  deep  green  which  rests  the 
soul  as  it  cools  the  eyes — grass,  that  febrifuge  of  the 
imagination,  which,  coming  after  the  woolly  gramma 
and  the  measureless  stretches  of  ashen-gray  sage 
brush  through  which  the  traveller  reaches  Salt  Lake 
City,  almost  makes  him  go  to  sleep  singing ;  grass, 
that  silent  ballad  of  Nature,  whereof  the  dying  bab- 


THE  NEW  JERUSALEM.  325 

ble  dimly  caught  snatches,  because  of  all  created 
things  it  best  blends  in  with  the  Eden  meadows 
dawning  on  their  inner  eyes  as  the  outer  glaze  slowly 
on  this  world. 

Brigham  Young,  Heber  Kimball,  and  Porter  Kock- 
well,  beside  many  other  Mormons  of  less  celebrity, 
have  told  me  that  when  they  first  came  to  the  pres- 
ent site  of  Salt  Lake  City,  it  was  as  arid  a  sand  and 
sage  barren  as  can  be  found  anywhere  in  the  plateaus 
of  the  Eocky  Mountain  chain.  Their  assertion  is  cor- 
roborated to  the  traveller  reaching  Salt  Lake  City 
from  any  point  of  the  compass,  by  the  sharply 
drawn  boundary  between  fields  fairly  packed  with 
harvest,  smiling  gardens,  and  orchards  where  the 
branches  crack  under  their  wealth  on  the  one  hand ; 
and  on  the  other,  tracts  where  no  living  thing  breaks 
the  monotony  of  sand  and  alkali  but  the  ashen  arte- 
misia,  the  cactus,  grease  wood,  or  salicorn. 

I  asked  the  Mormon  leaders  how,  under  the  cir- 
cumstances, they  could  ever  have  decided  to  found  a 
nation  here.  Twenty  years  ago,  the  theory  of  soils, 
physical  geography,  organic  chemistry,  and  the  en- 
tire tribe  of  sciences  embracing  these,  were  inade- 
quately understood,  even  by  technical  people,  profess- 
ors and  the  like,  whose  business  they  were.  As  to 
our  best  practical  farmers,  in  comparison  with  many 
boys  at  this  day  in  the  higher  classes  of  our  scientific 
schools,  they  were  so  ignorant  that  they  would  have 
turned  in  dismay  from  the  project  of  bringing  the  Salt 
Lake  Basin  under  profitable  culture.  Among  the  Mor- 
mon leaders  were  none  who  possessed  the  advantages 
which  we  express  by  the  comprehensive  term  of  "  a 
liberal  education."  Most  of  them  were  the  plainest 
of  plain  farmers.  Yet,  without  hesitation,  they  un- 


326       THE  HEART  OF  THE  CONTINENT. 

dertook  to  reclaim,  for  the  support  of  man,  a  tract 
whose  latent  possibilities  of  cultivation,  even  at  this 
day,  would  fail  to  present  themselves  by  any  exter- 
nal indication  to  ninety-nine  hundredths  of  the  best- 
read  and  keenest-minded  men  of  their  class.  This 
soil  is  tractable.  Indeed,  its  fertility  is  wonderful. 
But  how  could  they  know  it?  Or  was  it  possible  that 
the  chiefs  of  the  enterprise  felt  contented  with  the 
mere  fact  of  putting  between  their  people  and  their 
persecutors  twelve  hundred  miles  of  unsettled  wilder- 
ness, half  of  it  a  succession  of  giant  mountain  walls, 
with  a  coping  of  eternal  snow  ?  What  a  frightful 
responsibility  must  theirs  have  been  who  founded 
the  future  of  all  those  women,  children,  and  old  men 
(not  to  mention  the  able-bodied  men)  upon  a  guess ! 

But  Brigham  Young  solemnly  assured  me  that  it 
was  no  guess.  His  contemporaries  among  the  lead- 
ers indorse  that  statement.  Their  answer  is  that  God 
bade  them  stop  here.  To  the  north  of  the  city,  along 
the  Wahsatch  range,  they  point  out  for  the  curious 
stranger  a  peak  where  Brigham  Young,  like  Jacob, 
passed  the  night  in  wrestling  with  an  angel.  Going 
up  alone  into  this  mountain  to  pray  at  the  close  of 
the  day  when  the  people  with  him  reached  the  first 
ridge  whence  an  outlook  could  be  obtained  across  the 
valley  now  cradling  the  Saints'  metropolis,  he  fell  into 
a  trance  of  revelation.  A  certain  shining  one  came  to 
him  direct  from  God  and  the  martyred  prophet,  and 
telling  him  that  the  base  of  the  range  was  his  na- 
tion's goal,  finished  by  a  command  to  lead  the  peo- 
ple down  into  the  plain,  and  there  to  found  the  city 
whereof  the  Lord  had  promised  aforetime,  "All  men 
shall  flow  unto  it,  and  be  saved."  By  obedience  to 
those  heavenly  instructions,  the  Mormons  have  made 


THE  NEW  JERUSALEM.  327 

"  the  wilderness  like  Eden,  the  desert  like  the  garden 
of  the  Lord."  Thus,  the  establishment  of  the  Salt 
Lake  colony  is  without  a  precedent  in  the  history  of 
fanaticism ;  for  it  is  not  only  the  grandest  in  its  faith 
against  all  apparently  rational  likelihood,  but  the 
most  fully  justified  by  its  success.  After  this,  it  can 
be  no  matter  of  astonishment  to  any  reflecting  mind 
that  the  Mormons  unreservedly  believe  in  a  man  and 
a  system  vindicated  by  results  so  imprevisible  on  the 
ordinary  basis  of  human  experience.  As  a  direct 
corollary  from  this  statement  flows  the  irresistible 
conviction,  that,  of  whatever  else  they  may  be  guilty, 
the  great  majority  of  Mormons,  from  Brigham  Young 
down,  believe  in  themselves  and  their  fanaticism  as 
sincerely  as  the  devoutest  Christian  believes  in  the 
Gospel  of  Christ.  In  view  of  all  I  have  seen  and 
heard,  I  could  no  more  find  room  for  the  accusation 
of  these  men  as  hypocrites  than  for  a  suspicion  of  the 
sincerity  of  the  most  illustrious  martyr  in  the  Chris- 
tian Church. 

The  truth,  which  they  could  not  have  known  sci- 
entifically, because  as  yet  Science  scarcely  knew  it 
herself,  was  that  the  only  element  lacking  to  the  util- 
ization of  the  Utah  soil  was  water.  Irrigation  of 
course  had  been  understood  from  the  earliest  antiq- 
uity ;  but  that  this  was  the  only  need  of  a  soil  like 
that  of  the  Great  Basin,  no  one  knew,  for  the  fact  was 
contrary  to  all  external  indications. 

In  applying  the  process  of  irrigation  to  their  city 
site,  the  Mormons  performed  an  incredible  amount  of 
labor.  Much  of  this,  from  their  inexperience  and 
their  want  of  scientific  education,  was  merely  thrown 
away,  or,  more  accurately  speaking,  useful  only  as 
"  practice."  They  had  to  begin  studying  the  prob- 


328      THE  HEART  OF  THE  CONTINENT. 

lems  of  hydraulics  and  engineering  where  their  an- 
cestors began.  When  we  see  the  blunders  frequently 
made  by  nations  building  on  that  aggregation  of  past 
experiments  and  generalizations  known  as  science,  we 
shall  not  wonder  that  one  painfully  constructed  con- 
duit intended  to  supply  the  Saints  with  water,  refused 
to  fall  in  with  its  builders'  wishes,  from  the  fact  that 
it  sloped  up  toward  the  city  instead  of  down.  The 
successful  portion  of  their  result  remains.  It  is  ample 
for  their  present  purposes,  and  is  one  of  the  earliest 
novelties  which  strike  a  purely  American  traveller 
passing  through  their  streets. 

On  each  side  of  the  highway  one  is  surprised  to  see 
a  small,  but  rapid  and  unfailing  stream,  running  in 
what  we  should  call  the  gutter.  No  artificial  means 
are  taken  to  protect  it.  It  is  not  piped,  nor  tiled,  nor 
sluiced ;  the  utmost  that  is  anywhere  done  for  it  is 
to  pave  its  channel,  two  or  three  feet  in  breadth,  with 
uncemented  cobble-stones.  But  this  is  the  aqueduct. 
From  this  open  gutter,  the  inhabitants  of  Salt  Lake 
City,  now  numbering  between  seventeen  and  eigh- 
teen thousand  people,  draw  their  entire  supply  of  wa- 
ter for  all  purposes  whatsoever.  To  be  sure  a  few 
wells  have  been  sunk  in  different  portions  of  the  city ; 
Townsend,  our  landlord,  has  one  of  them  in  his  back 
yard ;  but  the  supply  which  they  afford  is  only  a  drop 
in  the  bucket  compared  with  that  running  along  the 
curbs,  and  even  to  the  taste  of  a  new-comer  alto- 
gether inferior  to  the  latter. 

All  the  earlier  associations  of  an  Eastern  man  con- 
nect the  gutter  with  ideas  of  sewerage ;  and  a  day  or 
two  must  pass  before  he  can  accustom  himself  to  the 
sight  of  his  waiter  dipping  up  from  the  street  the 
pitcher  of  drinking  water  for  which  he  has  rung,  or  the 


THE  NEW  JERUSALEM.  329 

pailful  which  is  going  into  the  kitchen  to  boil  his  din- 
ner, and  into  the  laundry  to  wash  his  clothes.  The  nov- 
elty of  the  sensation,  however,  soon  disappears  when 
he  pushes  his  investigations  from  street  to  street,  and 
nowhere  finds  •  impurity  of  any  kind  mingling  with 
the  rivulet  which  runs  clear  and  pellucid  before  his 
own  door.  Dead  leaves  and  sand,  the  same  foreign 
matters  as  the  wind  drifts  into  any  forest  spring,  are 
necessarily  found  in  such  an  open  conduit;  but  no 
garbage,  nothing  offensive  of  any  kind,  disturbs  its 
purity.  N 

Though  there  must  needs  be  some  unmanifested 
legislation  upon  the  subject,  the  water  seems  to  take 
care  of  itself;  there  are  no  regulations  posted  for  its 
protection ;  the  gutters  are  under  the  surveillance  of 
no  visible  police.  A  Mormon  citizen  need  hardly  be 
forbidden  to  throw  ashes,  or  slops,  or  swill  into  the 
water  on  which  he  and  his  neighbors  depend  for  com- 
fort, cleanliness,  and  even  life  itself.  I  never  saw  any- 
thing done  to  mar  the  purity  of  this  paragon  of  gutters 
by  the  littlest  child  or  most  ignorant  stranger. 

But  this  gutter  has  an  agricultural  as  well  as  a  do- 
mestic function  to  perform.  Across  the  sidewalk  hi 
front  of  every  citizen's  inclosure  runs  a  narrow 
channel,  sometimes  tiled  over,  sometimes  a  mere 
open  depression  such  as  might  be  scratched  with  a 
hoe,  leading  from  the  outer  and  public  stream  to  the 
inner  and  private  domain.  The  simplest  of  sluice- 
gates, a  smooth  board,  a  mere  shingle,  shuts  the  curb 
end  of  this  channel.  It  seems  an  easy  matter  to  pull 
it  up.  A  baby  could  lift  it?  speaking  after  the  manner 
of  muscles  and  tendons.  But  the  late  lamented 
Windship  could  not  stir  it,  speaking  "m  foro  con- 
scientice"  Starr  King  used  to  tell  with  great  gusto 


330  THE   HEART  OF  THE   CONTINENT. 

the  story  of  a  New  England  official,  small,  unusually 
small,  in  the  respect  of  avoirdupois,  but  great  in 
soul,  who,  on  being  threatened  with  personal  violence 
by  the  malcontent  whom  he  was  sent  to  arrest,  re- 
plied, "  Shake  me  ?  Shake  me  ?  When  you  shake  me, 
you  shake  the  State  of  Massachusetts  !  "  Similarly, 
the  person  who  inconsiderately  lifts  that  shingle,  lifts 
the  Church  of  the  Latter-day  Saints;  and  that,  as 
my  old  pioneer  Comstock  would  say,  "  is  a  pretty 
hefty  pull  for  any  man." 

The  water  of  Mormondom,  like  everything  else 
vital,  except  the  contumacious  air  which  has  not  yet 
been  brought  to  its  bearings,  is  the  property  and  the 
concern  of  the  Church.  The  Church  therefore  ap- 
points a  water-warden,  whose  business  it  is  to  see  that 
the  supply  gets  apportioned  on  principles  of  equity  to 
every  man's  close,  so  far  as  he  has  reduced  it  to  culti- 
vation. Sometimes,  when  the  previous  winter's  snow 
has  been  comparatively  scanty  on  the  mountain-tops 
(as  was  the  case  during  the  winter  precedent  to  this 
particular  summer  of  which  I  speak),  great  discretion 
is  necessary  in  the  allotment  of  the  shares  devoted  to 
irrigation.  A  scheme  is  carefully  laid  out  by  the  wa- 
ter-warden, calculated  for  the  portion  of  the  common 
territory  which  each  land-holder  owns,  and  showing  as 
delicately  as  possible,  by  the  necessarily  rude  means 
of  measurement,  just  how  much  water  per  diem  falls 
to  the  share  of  each  cultivated  lot  in  the  city.  With 
this  scheme  in  hand,  the  water- warden  daily  goes  his 
rounds,  and  lifts  the  sluice-gates  accordingly.  Thus, 
for  instance,  Brother  Brown's  lot  is  twice  the  area  of 
Brother  Perkins's  immediately  adjoining;  therefore 
the  warden  lifts  Brother  Brown's  gate  from  9  until  11 
o'clock  A.  M.,  Brother  Perkins's  gate  meanwhile  remain- 


THE  NEW  JERUSALEM.  331 

ing  shut.  At  11  o'clock  Brother  Brown's  gate  is  shut, 
and  from  that  time  till  noon  Brother  Perkins  has  his 
gate  "  histed."  This  system  accords  with  a  state  of 
society  patriarchally  simple ;  and  the  existence  of  such 
a  state  of  society  among  the  Mormons  is  sufficiently 
indicated  by  the  fact  that  the  misdemeanor  of  "  hist- 
ing  "  one's  own  gate  is  almost,  if  not  entirely,  un- 
known to  the  calendar  of  the  ecclesiastical  court. 

Inside  the  land-holder's  fence  the  apparatus  for  the 
distribution  of  his  share  to  the  thirsty  soil  is  no  less 
simple  than  effective.  Across  the  land  which  he  cul- 
tivates runs  a  netrwork  of  shallow  furrows  or  scratches 
connected  with  the  channel  coming  under  his  fence 
from  the  gutter.  As  the  water  is  let  in  to  him  it 
finds  its  way  through  this  right-angled  system  of 
channels,  and  is  rapidly  drunk  up  by  the  planted 
squares  between  them.  If  he  is  an  enthusiast  in 
horticulture,  and  has  particular  beds  or  single  plants 
which  are  his  favorites,  he  leads  a  private  tidbit  (if  I 
may  be  allowed  that  term  for  anything  fluid)  to  the 
roots  of  his  pet,  by  opening  a  temporary  channel 
from  the  main  furrow  with  his  cane  or  the  toe  of  his 
boot.  The  associations  of  Palestine  throng  every- 
where throughout  Mormondom,  and  with  special  co- 
gency they  came  upon  me  here.  I  remembered  the 
declaration  of  the  Psalmist,  "Thou  turnest  men's 
hearts  as  the  rivers  of  water  are  turned,"  in  connec- 
tion with  another  scriptural  expression :  "  When  a 
man's  ways  please  the  Lord,  he  maketh  even  his  ene- 
mies to  be  at  peace  with  him."  Nowhere  on  this 
side  of  the  Holy  Land  could  the  preacher  find  such 
an  illustration  for  the  first  text.  The  proprietor's 
foot  made  a  little  scratch  toward  the  root  of  a  Law- 
ton  blackberry  he  was  trying ;  the  activity  he  put 


332  THE  HEART  OF  THE   CONTINENT. 

forth  was  nearly  unconscious,  but  the  longed-for 
moisture  crept  toward  the  delicate  thirsty  spongioles, 
and  by  one  slight  contraction  of  a  human  muscle,  the 
prosperity  of  that  strange  orphan,  that  banished  scion 
among  shrubs,  was  permanently  secured.  How  much 
of  the  Bible's  poetry  we  lose  through  our  ignorance 
of  physical  geography !  Henceforth  to  the  Lawton 
blackberry,  the  cloudless  sun,  which  had  shone  but 
to  wilt  it  before,  was  a  guide  luring  it  upward  with  a 
golden  finger.  So  the  proprietor's  furrow,  scratched 
with  a  mere  boot-tip,  had  instantly  changed  a  curse 
into  a  blessing ;  and  the  wilting,  parching,  blasting 
enemy  was  in  an  instant  converted  to  the  best  of 
friends.  The  poor  little  spindling  thorny  canes  found 
the  sunlight  "at  peace  with  them,"  as  the  rivulets  of 
water  were  turned  to  give  them  drink.  This  is  but 
one  of  the  multitudinous,  even  constant  illustrations 
of  some  Old  Testament  statement  found  among  the 
Mormons,  whether  they  be  citizens  or  agriculturists. 
Indeed,  the  whole  Mormon  polity  is  only  a  fresh 
realization  of  the  elder  and  original  Jewish  life. 

The  freshly  arrived  Gentile  is  surprised  at  the  pau- 
city of  women  in  the  streets  of  Salt  Lake  City,  and 
still  more  so  by  the  appearance  of  the  few  who  do 
manifest  themselves.  I  had  expected  to  find  the 
feminine  element  largely  predominating  on  the  side- 
walks of  a  nation  whose  essential  characteristic  is 
disproportion  of  the  sexes  on  the  woman's  side.  But 
the  settlements  of  Colorado  (a  Territory  in  which  the 
disproportion  in  the  opposite  direction  is  something 
quite  appalling)  are  gay  with  the  ornamental  portion 
of  the  race,  compared  with  the  thoroughfares  of  Mor- 
mondom.  Any  sunshiny  day  in  Denver  or  Central 
City  brings  out  on  the  promenade  a  greater  number 


THE  NEW  JERUSALEM.  333 

of  women  than  can  be  found  under  the  most  favor- 
able circumstances  in  the  streets  of  Salt  Lake  City. 
I  could  only  account  for  this  fact  by  supposing  that 
the  institution  of  the  harem,  no  matter  where  trans- 
planted nor  by  what  race  adopted,  inevitably  brings 
with  it  the  jealousies  and  the  rigors  of  Stamboul;  that 
polygamy  and  the  seclusion  of  women  are  fundamen- 
tally inseparable. 

Such  women  as  appear  are  a  further  surprise  to  the 
Gentile,  by  their  unobtrusive,  unconscious  demeanor. 
Not  unnaturally,  one  expects  to  find  the  Mormoness 
either  shamefaced  or  brazen.  I  looked  for  dejected 
faces,  faces  that  knew,  felt,  and  showed  their  owners' 
degradation ;  or  hard,  defiant  faces,  glorying  boldly 
in  their  shame.  Nothing  of  the  kind  appeared.  My 
mistake  arose  through  forgetfulness  that  the  social 
moralities  are  manufactured ;  artificial,  not  natural ; 
man's  temporary  expediency,  not  God's  eternal  law ; 
that  shame  is  merely  the  regret  one  feels,  discovering 
himself  ridiculously  at  variance  with  the  usages  of 
the  surrounding  majority.  The  poet  is  right  by  the 
lofty  ideal  standard  (which  nobody  observes) ;  en- 
tirely wrong  by  the  practical  standard  (on  which  the 
whole  world  shapes  itself),  for,  whenever  the  high 
ideal  man  gets  grouped  with  others  into  a  community, 
there  "honor  and  shame"  do  "from  condition  rise," 
and,  indeed,  rise  from  nothing  else.  A  public  opinion, 
isolated  from  all  others  on  one  hand  by  a  mountain 
system  six  hundred  miles  wide,  and  on  the  other 
hand  by  a  desert  of  equal  width,  accepts  of  polyg- 
amy as  the  normal  state  of  the  race.  Thus,  on  all 
principles  of  social  morality,  I,  who  had  been  looking 
to  see  Mormon  women  blush  and  drop  their  veils  as 
they  passed  me,  should  have  stayed  in  my  room  at 


334       THE  HEART  OF  THE  CONTINENT. 

Townsend's,  with  my  cheeks  crimsoned  by  the  thought 
that  I  was  a  degraded  monogamist !  In  fact,  the  women 
appeared  like  the  respectable  class  of  seamstresses 
common  in  any  Eastern  city,  conscious  not  only  of  no 
degradation,  but  of  no  singularity.  A  person  igno- 
rant of  the  system  under  which  they  lived,  would 
never  have  looked  at  them  a  second  time. 

After  getting  thoroughly  rested  from  our  sleepless 
ride  of  six  hundred  miles,  we  gladly  accepted  the 
guidance  of  one  of  our  newly  acquired  acquaintances, 
and  went  out  to  overhaul  the  lions  of  Salt  Lake  City. 

One  of  the  first  places  which  we  visited  was  the 
Theatre,  or  Opera-house.  This  was  a  comparatively 
recent  building,  but  engaged  our  earliest  attention 
from  the  fact  that  its  interior  was  at  the  present 
moment  lively  with  preparations  for  the  coming  In- 
dependence Ball  to  be  given  by  the  President.  We 
were  now  at  the  end  of  June  or  early  in  July.  My 
diary  does  not  tell  me  the  exact  date,  but  it  could 
not  have  been  later  than  the  first  day  of  the  latter 
month. 

The  building  was  situated  on  one  of  the  streets  run- 
ning parallel  to  that  Main  (or  vulgariter  "Whiskey"  ) 
Street  on  which  Townsend's  fronted.  It  was  situated 
at  a  trifling  distance  from  the  presidential  mansions, 
and  belonged  to  Brigham  Young,  who  had  erected 
it  not  only  with  a  view  to  furnishing  accommodation 
for  the  amusements  of  his  people  as  a  state  expe- 
diency, but  as  a  business  speculation.  I  am  far 
enough  from  any  inclination  to  state  this  fact  as  a 
slur.  Brigham  Young  has  no  less  right  to  make 
money  than  any  private  citizen;  and  it  is  creditable 
to  his  tact  and  foresight  to  have  initiated  an  enter- 
prise which  abundantly  conduces  to  the  welfare  of 


THE  NEW  JERUSALEM.  335 

the  Church,  while  it  acts  for  his  own  emolument. 
Here,  once  for  all,  I  desire  to  record  my  conviction 
that  if,  instead  of  harmonizing,  as  in  the  present  in- 
stance, the  two  interests  of  church  advancement  and 
selfish  aggrandizement  happened  to  clash,  Brigham 
Young  would  not  hesitate  the  fraction  of  a  second 
after  perceiving  the  fact  to  put  his  own  interests  un- 
der foot,  and  conserve  those  of  abstract  Mormonism. 

Without  any  such  knowledge  of  the  classics  as 
might  have  informed  Brigham  Young  how  the  Koman 
ruler  kept  his  people  good-natured  by  bread  and  cir- 
cus acting,  the  remarkable  master  of  this  remarkable 
nation,  by  his  own  shrewd  sense  and  clear  intuitions, 
from  the  beginning  understood  the  vast  efficiency  of 
amusements  as  an  element  in  the  enginery  of  a  rigor- 
ous government.  While  the  "  Social  Hall "  (a  small 
saloon  like  those  devoted  to  concerts  and  lectures  at 
the  East)  seemed  sufficient  for  popular  accommoda- 
tion, the  head  of  the  "  Latter-day  Saints  "  gave  not 
only  the  prestige  of  his  approval  and  monetary  aid 
to  the  institution  which  provided  his  people  with  in- 
nocent recreation,  but  contributed  his  actual  presence 
to  their  sports,  and  (what  was  a  still  more  perilous 
experiment,  but  abundantly  justified  by  the  result) 
personally  joined  in  these  sports,  leading  the  dance, 
like  Napoleon  at  the  Tuileries. 

When  the  rapid  growth  of  the  population  de- 
manded a  wider  area  for  the  hours  of  its  unbending, 
the  President,  taking  the  initiative  as  in  all  other 
popular  movements,  condescended  to  become  the 
builder  and  proprietor  of  the  first  nominally  consti- 
tuted theatre  or  opera-house  erected  within  the  Mor- 
mon dominions.  The  accounts  of  this  enterprise 
belong  to  his  personal  ledger,  and  its  use  is  granted 


336       THE  HEART  OF  THE  CONTINENT. 

to  any  organization  calculated  to  further  its  purpose, 
at  a  rate  merely  equivalent  to  the  interest  on  his  ex- 
penditure in  building  and  keeping  it  in  repair.  I 
have  spoken  of  it  as  tending  to  his  aggrandizement, 
but  in  justice  I  should  substitute  for  that  statement 
the  assertion  that  it  does  not  tend  to  his  loss. 

We  found  the  building  a  very  plain  one.  Its  fa- 
gade  was  covered  with  a  neutral-tinted  stucco,  and  en- 
tirely without  ornamentation,  unless  a  surface  broken 
by  simple  pilasters  be  considered  as  such. 

The  front  doors  were  closed.  It  was  still  early  in 
the  afternoon,  and  we  visited  the  theatre  quite  as 
much  for  the  sake  of  becoming  acquainted  with  the 
people  whom  we  were  likely  to  find  engaged  in  the 
overseeing  or  handiwork  of  its  preparation  for  the 
approaching  festival,  as  for  a  good  view  of  itself. 
We  passed  by  a  narrow  side-alley  to  the  rear,  and 
entered  through  a  dark,  tortuous  passage,  such  as 
leads  through  the  hinder  part  of  any  theatre  at  the 
East. 

We  found  the  stage  finely  commodious,  less  so  than 
that  of  the  New  York  Academy  of  Music,  but  a  trifle 
larger  than  that  of  Niblo's.  Its  area  was  not  so  well 
distributed  as  that  of  the  latter  theatre,  the  breadth 
to  a  certain  extent  being  sacrificed  to  the  depth;  but 
the  happy  calculation  or  chance  which  made  Niblo's 
stage  as  nearly  perfect  in  its  proportions  as  any  in 
the  world,  cannot  be  expected  everywhere,  —  even 
among  an  inspired  race  like  the  Modern  Theocracy. 
No  Mormon  doubts  the  fact  that  the  plan  of  the  Tab- 
ernacle and  the  Temple  have  been  revealed  to  Brig- 
ham  Young,  as  was  the  pattern  of  the  former  edifice 
among  the  Jews  to  Moses ;  but  I  suppose  that  even 
the  most  enthusiastic  theocrat  does  not  expect  to 


THE  NEW  JERUSALEM.  337 

have  Heaven  make  out  all  the  specifications  for  a 
Mormon  Winter  Garden. 

The  air  was  busy  with  the  sound  of  the  carpenter's 
hammer,  putting  down  the  last  planks  of  the  tempo- 
rary floor  flush  with  the  stage,  and  covering  the  entire 
parquet;  and  between  the  strokes  rose  a  hum  of 
women's  voices,  or  above  them  every  now  and  then 
a  shrill  call  or  a  ringing  laugh.  The  talk  was  poly- 
glot; for  among  the  sisters  who  were  dressing  the 
theatre  were  not  only  the  elder  comers  and  expe- 
rienced Saints,  but  recent  arrivals  from  numerous  na- 
tionalities. I  noticed  in  the  bustling  little  groups 
that  sat  binding  the  ropes  with  evergreens  after  the 
manner  of  an  Eastern  Christmas  church-dressing,  or 
supplied  the  binders  with  culled  cedar  sprigs  from 
the  big  fragrant  heaps,  a  number  of  fresh  Scandina- 
vians, and  many  more  of  those  unmistakable  German 
bauerinnen,  whose  short  blue  petticoats  and  elephantine 
ankles  make  such  a  large  portion  of  the  picture  pre- 
sented by  every  station  platform  in  the  West  where 
an  emigrant  train  lies  by  on  the  switch.  The  Kat- 
chens  and  Gretchens  had  not  lost  a  single  one  of 
those  distinctive  peculiarities  which  mark  them  any- 
where between  Castle  Garden  and  St.  Louis,  except 
that  their  big,  honest,  glass-blue  eyes  looked  a  trifle 
less  dolly  and  wondering.  Well  might  this  be,  after 
their  bumps  of  the  marvelous  had  been  calloused  by 
such  tremendous  thumps  of  impression  as  even  a 
Yankee  gets  from  twelve  hundred  miles  of  Plains  and 
Kocky  Mountain  travelling,  to  say  nothing  of  me  pe- 
culiar and  special  blow  which  must  have  been  inflicted 
on  candidates  for  female  saintship  by  the  realities  of 
Mormondom  itself.  Otherwise  they  were  the  same 
sturdy,  stumpy  little  peasants  as  huddle  about  the 

32 


338       THE  HEART  OF  THE  CONTINENT. 

Battery  on  the  arrival  of  a  Bremen  bark,  with  the 
same  linty  locks  straggling  from  under  their  caps 
over  full-moon  faces  of  that  curious  color  produced 
by  tan  upon  a  blonde  complexion.  The  sun  which 
had  flooded  them  throughout  their  Overland  journey, 
had  only  intensified  the  photography  of  Bavarian 
harvest -fields  and  Prussian  turnip -patches.  Inter- 
mingling, or  rather  forming  interspersed  groups,  with 
these  (for  as  yet  they  had  learned  no  common 
tongue)  were  Kent  and  Surrey  hop-pickers;  sprightly 
Welsh  shepherdesses,  brightest-eyed,  sturdiest-calved, 
blackest-haired  of  all;  Irishwomen  (the  smallest  lot, 
as  belonging  to  a  race  preoccupied  by  other  than 
the  Mormon  despotism)  and  a  few  Americans,  who, 
wherever  they  appeared,  were  the  dominant  sisters  of 
the  circle.  I  wandered  among  them,  and  universally 
found  cheerful,  contented  faces,  except  where  mid- 
dle age,  attained  before  the  peasant  left  Europe, 
had  made  indelible  the  traces  of  servile  labor  and 
hardship.  Nowhere,  however,  could  I  find  a  coun- 
tenance which  even  so  much  as  once  in  its  life-time 
had  been  enlivened  by  the  higher  class  of  thoughts 
and  emotions.  The  better  brute  faculties  were  rep- 
resented everywhere.  Industrious  patience,  good  na- 
ture, dog  fidelity,  sullen  strength,  —  these  were  ubiq- 
uitous; and  I  could  well  believe  that  in  many  cases 
the  emancipation  of  such  elements  from  the  hopeless 
servility  of  peasant  life  in  Europe  had  been  a  true 
improvement  and  elevation,  even  though  the  change 
had  been  from  a  professed  Christianity  into  a  real 
Mormonism.  Certainly  the  monogamy  of  a  Stafford- 
shire potter's  hovel,  or  of  a  den  in  the  mining  districts 
of  England,  on  the  gauge  of  progressive  civilization 
is  several  notches  below  the  polygamy  of  Utah.  Cer- 


THE  NEW  JERUSALEM.  339 

tain  apes  are  monogamic,  but  their  females  would  be 
bettered  by  becoming  women,  though  the  transfor- 
mation involved  their  participation  in  a  Tartar  harem. 
Thus,  despite  our  view  of  it  in  the  absolute,  Mormon- 
ism  may  prove,  in  transitu,  a  valuable  ascending  step 
to  many  wretched  slaves  among  the  laboring  classes 
of  Europe,  who  now  are  women  but  in  name,  bearing 
all  the  pangs  and  insults  of  the  man,  with  an  addition 
of  maternal  throes  and  wearinesses.  I  felt  glad  to 
think  thus  as  I  went  looking  about  me  among  the 
new-come  women  dressing  the  Salt  Lake  Theatre. 
Here  they  were  not  doing  field  labor,  hoeing,  carry- 
ing asses'  burdens.  Many  of  them,  in  twining  these 
pretty  cedar  wreaths  and  making  these  ropes  of  fra- 
grant greenery,  had  the  first  womanly  work  of  their 
lives,  the  first  work  to  be  sung  or  smiled  over,  to  call 
out  the  higher  faculties  of  soul  or  fingers.  Some  of 
them  were  singing,  many  smiling,  and  I  felt  a  mixture 
of  pain  and  pleasure  as  I  saw  how  awkward  their 
features  were  at  it.  It  was  as  if  the  facial  muscles 
were  taking  an  apprenticeship  at  expressing  happy 
thoughts,  and  their  hearts  had  a  furlough  to  be  glad 
for  the  first  time.  What  struck  me  most  strangely 
was  the  entire  absence  of  representatives  from  the 
upper  ranks  of  Mormon  woman  society,  for  compara- 
tively, at  any  rate,  there  are  such  ranks.  At  the 
East,  even  among  the  monogamists  of  a  society  so 
full  of  imperfections  as  our  own,  such  like  festival 
preparation  rallies  all  the  squires'  and  lawyers'  wives, , 
the  ladies  from  the  first  village  families,  those  who 
are  conspicuous  at  the  quiltings,  those  who  lead  in 
the  Dorcas  and  sewing  societies.  No  women  cor- 
responding to  those  who  make  vestry -rooms  and 
school-houses  cheery  throughout  the  week  before  an 


340       THE  HEAKT  OF  THE  CONTINENT. 

Eastern  Christmas  were  anywhere  visible  among  the 
evergreens  of  the  Salt  Lake  Theatre. 

On  the  stage  I  was  introduced  to  several  prominent 
men  of  the  Territory  who  were  superintending  the 
work.  They  were  capable,  intelligent-looking  peo- 
ple, and  so  well  dressed  that  they  might  easily  have 
passed  for  Gentile  visitors.  The  day  of  religious 
costuming  seems  to  have  gone  by  everywhere.  The 
"  great  human  average  "  runs  through  sects  as  well 
as  nationalities ;  in  cities  at  least,  Quakers  manifest 
their  adherence  to  the  meeting  by  their  primness  in 
the  clothes  of  the  world,  rather  than  by  the  assump- 
tion of  any  uniform  garb  of  their  own.  Similarly 
among  the  ruling  Mormons,  singularity  of  dress  or 
hair-cut  has  fallen  out  of  favor,  on  the  very  admira- 
ble principle  of  Goethe  (I  quote  "Wilhelm  Meister  " 
from  memory)  that  he  who  differs  from  his  fellows 
in  some  chief  particular  should  be  all  the  more  care- 
ful to  conform  to  them  in  non-essentials.  Thus  a 
very  influential  Mormon  then  standing  on  the  stage, 
and  a  son-in-law  of  Prophet-President  Brigham,  was 
really  a  surprise  to  me  when  I  discovered  his  belong- 
ing to  the  Saints,  since  on  Broadway  he  would  have 
passed  for  a  thriving  Boston  merchant  or  a  Lowell 
manufacturer.  He  had  the  clean-shaven,  keen-feat- 
ured face  of  a  New  England  business  man  still  cling- 
ing to  the  habitudes  of  twenty  years  ago.  (I  set  the 
chronological  limit  to  save  the  former  epithet,  "  clean- 
shaven" which  is  distinctive  of  no  class  of  sensible 
men  at  the  present  day,  though  occasional  individuals 
of  sense,  through  eccentricity  or  misfortune,  are  still 
found  beardless.)  The  governing  classes  on  the  stage 
(there  were  several  of  that  denomination)  were  as  un- 
mistakable in  the  crowd  of  workmen  and  workwomen 
as  they  are  everywhere  else. 


THE  NEW  JERUSALEM.  341 

Out  of  all  present,  I  recognized  one  man  as  the 
ruling  spirit  the  moment  I  set  my  eyes  on  him,  and 
it  required  but  small  discrimination  of  character  to 
do  so.  He  more  fully  met  my  preconceived  ideal 
than  any  of  the  Saints  I  saw  on  that  or  any  other 
time.  He  might  have  stood  for  a  full-length  statue 
of  "  The  Mormon."  Perhaps  because  my  mind  felt 
flattered  to  find  its  preconceptions  so  fully  realized, 
even  where  some  of  them  were  not  entirely  just  to 
the  Saints  in  general,  my  attention  had  become  pleas- 
urably  riveted  upon  him  several  minutes  before  our 
cicerone  had  an  opportunity  to  introduce  us  to  his 
apostolic  notice.  He  was  a  man  apparently  somewhat 
over  sixty,  but  showing  none  of  the  infirmity  of  years. 
He  was  erect,  portly,  full-chested,  broad-shouldered, 
powerfully  made,  about  six  feet  high,  and  weighed 
two  hundred  pounds.  Perhaps  he  was  originally  a 
blacksmith,  as  they  say ;  he  may  have  combined  that 
employment  with  the  agricultural  calling,  which  he 
afterward  told  me  occupied  his  youth.  He  was  built 
like  a  cyclops,  at  any  rate.  Everything  about  him 
spoke  of  rude  animal  vigor.  His  face  was  very  strik- 
ing :  a  compound  of  keen  wit,  finesse,  insight  into 
character,  with  native  sensuality  enough  to  furnish 
the  basis  for  a  Vitellius.  Perhaps  it  was  the  latter 
half  of  his  face  which  made  him  satisfy  my  ideal  of 
"  The  Mormon,"  and  there  I  was  unjust ;  for  on  close 
study  I  did  not  find  that  the  basis  of  this  remarkable 
people's  fanaticism  was  laid  in  sensuality, — however 
much  the  fact  of  polygamy  might  superficially  point 
to  that  conclusion.  Neither  would  it  be  just  to  call 
sensuality  this  particular  Mormon's  governing  trait. 

His  bright  black  eyes  were  small  and  twinkling ; 
his  well  proportioned  nose  regular,  but  coarse.  His 


342       THE  HEART  OF  THE  CONTINENT. 

cheeks  encroached  on  the  orbital  cavities  above  them, 
and  in  common  with  his  whole  face  were  pluffy  and 
blonde,  with  a  glaze  of  sunburn  from  apostolic  sum- 
mer tours.  His  lips  were  very  full,  and  the  expres- 
sion of  the  whole  mouth  lickerish  as  Falstaff' s  ;  his 
chin  was  double  and  shiny,  from  the  twin  effect  of 
good  living  and  close-shaving.  His  tout  ensemble  spoke 
a  man  who,  to  the  utmost,  relished  and  possessed  the 
seventh  heaven  of  bodily  bliss,  unalloyed  by  the 
slightest  complication  with  poetic  fantasies,  undis- 
turbed by  the  least  intrusion  of  metaphysical  obsta- 
cles or  problems.  I  am  only  as  uncomplimentary  as 
a  photograph,  —  moreover,  I  can  heal  the  wounds  of 
visual  truth,  as  a  photograph  cannot,  by  saying  that, 
no  matter  how  he  looked,  the  man  who  had  climbed  to 
the  second  place  in  a  nation  of  one  hundred  thousand 
people,  was  one  of  the  most  energetic  apostles  of  the 
Latter-day  faith,  and  shared  Brigham  Young's  most 
intimate  friendship,  must  have  possessed  very  strong 
qualities  whereby  to  accomplish  these  things  in  addi- 
tion and  counterpoise  to  mere  sensuality.  Let  me 
finish  the  statue  before  I  engrave  its  name  on  the 
pedestal.  This  powerful  figure  is  an  exception  to  my 
recent  assertion,  that  among  the  Mormons  singularity 
of  dress  has  become  obsolete.  His  dress  is  not  a  sec- 
tarian uniform,  nor  is  it  absolutely  eccentric;  still  it  is 
curious.  One  would  not  like  to  dress  in  such  fashion 
anywhere  out  of  Salt  Lake  City,  nor  even  there,  un- 
less he  were  an  apostle.  The  costume  consists  (begin- 
ning as  is  proper  from  the  base),  imprimis,  of  a  pair  of 
plain  but  well  blacked  and  polished  cowskin  shoes, 
with  simple  galloon  strings  running  through  two 
holes  each  in  flaps  and  upper ;  next,  a  pair  of  panta- 
loons, fashioned  out  of  the  identical  buff  and  appar- 


THE  NEW  JERUSALEM.  343 

ently  cotton  fabric,  which  twenty-five  years  ago  was 
worn  in  the  nursery  by  the  author's  contemporaries, 
under  the  agreeably  Shemitic-sounding  name  of  nan- 
keen (and  which  he  may  say,  fascinated  by  its  clean 
look,  no  less  than  its  cool  and  pleasant  memory,  he  has 
often  sought  for  in  the  shops  of  adult  experience) ; 
thirdly,  of  a  vest  identical  in  material  with  the  panta- 
loons ;  next,  of  an  alpaca  coat,  whose  pattern,  though 
ecclesiastical,  the  ungodly  call  "shadbelly,"  but  which, 
to  unconverted  ears,  will  be  familiar  as  a  "  cutaway  " 
or  "  claw-hammer  jacket."  Certain  persons  may  won- 
der why  I  do  not  call  the  upper  garment  a  dress-coat 
at  once ;  but  the  dress-coat  varies,  having  no  eter- 
nal principle  about  it,  save  the  absence  of  front  skirts. 
Its  tails  may  be  of  any  cut,  but  the  exact  curve  of 
the  apostolic  skirts  is  expressed  to  any  American 
mind,  familiar  with  camp-meetings,  by  the  term 
"  shadbelly."  The  aperture  of  the  nankeen  vest  is 
cut  to  a  medium  depth,  and  discloses  a  faultless  frill 
of  delicately  hand-stitched  linen,  white  'as  a  snow- 
flake  fresh  caught  on  the  apostolic  bosom.  A  narrow 
black  stock,  of  silk,  loosely  holds  the  turn-down  collar 
about  a  throbbing,  manly  throat;  while,  last  of  all  ex- 
terior embellishments,  a  sugar-loaf  hat,  of  the  finest 
yellow  Leghorn,  puts  the  top  finish  on  my  statue  of 
Heber  Kimball.  We  were  presented  to  him  by  the 
President's  favorite  son-in-law,  Mr.  Clawson. 

"  Travellers  are  ye,  heh?  "  said  Heber  Kimball,  after 
he  had  taken  us  in  at  the  front  of  those  alert  little 
sparkling  black  eyes,  and  remanded  us  over  to  their 
tail  for  further  consideration.  "  York  ?  " 

"  Yes !     What  made  you  think  so  ?  " 

"  Don't  know ;  kinder  tell  a  man  from  York,  allers. 
Came  from  there  m'self.  Didn't  ye  know  that  ?  " 


344       THE  HEART  OF  THE  CONTINENT. 

"Indeed!     Is  that  so?" 

"  Cer-tin  I  Joseph  Smith,  Brigham  Young,  'n  I, 
were  all  neighbors  when  we  were  boys.  Lived  right  'n 
the  same  school-deestrict,  Ontario  County.  Our  par- 
ents came  there  'n  settled  when  we  weren't  more  'n  so 
high"  (the  apostle  flattened  his  broad  brown  hand 
about  three  feet  from  the  ground). 

"  I've  spent  months  in  Ontario  County  myself." 

"Where's  that?" 

"  At  Clifton,  where  they  have  the  Water  Cure." 

"Don't  say?  That's  clos't'  the  Sulphur  Springs! 
Tew  be  sure  !  I  know  where  that  is,  perfectly.  They 
used  to  have  a  ta-ar-vern  there  where  the  boys  'n 
gals  went  out  a  sleigh-ridin',  'n  wound  up  with  a 
dance.  Ever  out  to  the  hill  where  Joseph  Smith  dug 
up  the  plates  ?  " 

"  No,  I've  often  heard  of  the  place,  but  never  had  a 
chance  to  go  to  it  "  — 

"  Yes,  to  be  sure,  that's  in  another  direction.  Well, 
I  know  all  that  country.  Been  in  Canandaigua  lots 
of  times ;  used  to  be  our  market ;  there,  in  fact,  we 
lived  till  they  drove  us  out,  when  the  persecution 
first  began,  ye  know.  We  never  had  no  fair  chance 
there.  But  there  the  prophet  of  the  Lord  begun,  and 
now  —  well,  don't  it  seem  a  kinder  cur'us  ?"  (turning 
to  the  President's  son-in-law)  "  when  I  think  o'  all  the 
way  the  Lord  's  led  us,  it  seems  like  a  dream !  There 
I  was  down  in  Lake  City  yesterday,  and  Provo  the 
day  afore,  and  Payson  and  Nephi  the  week  afore  that, 
and  the  Lord  was  with  us,  and  we  had  big  meetin's, 
and  the  brethren  and  sisters  all  came  in  from  a-get- 
tin'  in  the  harvest,  and  the  grain  was  all  ripe  for  the 
sickle  (turning  again  half  unconsciously  to  the  saintly 
son-in-law),  and  we  had  a  blessed  time  !  0,  Brother 


THE  NEW  JERUSALEM.  345 

Brigham  spoke  with  power.  We  must  a  had  a  thou- 
sand each  time,  and  though  it  was  a  putty  busy  sea- 
son with  crops,  the  work  o'  the  Lord  was  gay-lo-rious  ! 
Eight  into  the  midst  o'  my  talk  about  the  valleys  and 
the  mountains  whereunto  them  as  is  blessed  o'  the 
Lord  is  all  a-flowin'  to  be  saved,  I  thought  of  that  old 
Ontario  County  and  the  deestrict  school,  where  we  all 
sot  together  afore  the  Lord  called  Joseph — seemed  's 
if  the  old  place  stood  right  afore  my  face :  wall,  I 
suppose  the  old  county  ain't  much  changed  ;  'twas  a 
kinder  slow  old  neighborhood,  anyhow." 

"  No,  I  don't  suppose  that  many  changes  have 
taken  place  since  you  saw  it  last.  It's  still  a  quiet 
farming  country.  Nothing,  except  the  town  of  Canan- 
daigua,  seems  to  keep  it  alive,  unless  it's  the  Sulphur 
Springs  at  Clifton,  where  there  is  a  pretty  steady  flow 
of  sick  people  as  well  as  sulphur,  —  the  one  coming 
to  get  cured  by  the  other." 

"  That  al'ays  used  to  be  a  steady  business.  They 
reckoned  it  was  good  for  the  cattle  before  folks  that 
had  suthin'  a  matter  o'  them  went  there.  The  people 
that  didn't  like  it  said  it  biled  right  out  o'  hell.  When 
the  first  trains  were  a-comin'  over,  before  the  Lord 
pitched  our  tents  down  here  in  the  valley,  we  used 
to  hear  a  good  deal  o'  the  same  kind  o'  talk  talked 
by  the  people.  It  used  to  seem  kind  o'  familiar  to 
me,  and  I  said  to  'em  there  was  no  use  o'  judgin'  a 
matter  before  they  heerd  it,  for  I  remembered  those 
very  Sulphur  Springs  of  Ontario  County;  and  here, 
right  among  the  selfsame  kind  o'  waters,  springs  the 
streams  that  is  for  the  healing  o'  the  nations.  How 
long  h'ye  been  here  ?  " 

"  Only  a  couple  of  days." 

"  Well,  you  must  stay  and  get  better  acquainted. 


346      THE  HEART  OF  THE  CONTINENT. 

Look  around  here !  What  d'ye  think  o'  this  ?  Some 
o'  these  women  ha'  only  been  here  since  the  last 
train  got  in.  There's  'similation  !  We  work  the  ma- 
terial right  in  at  once !  There's  every  kind  here  ; 
some  o'  them  can't  speak  a  word  o'  English." 

"  Yes,  so  I  hear.     They  seem  very  contented." 

"  Contented  ?  Yes.  Their  hearts  are  ready  to  leap 
for  joy !  These  are  they  of  whom  it  was  spoken, '  All 
flesh  shall  flow  unto  it  and  be  saved ! '  You  must  go 
around  among  us.  It's  a  wonder  to  all  who  will  be- 
hold. Why,  sixteen  years  ago  this  very  plot  we're 
standin'  on  was  the  barrenest  sage  brush  you  ever 
see.  Now,  lo  and  behold  !  the  Lord  is  covering  with 
his  chosen  all  the  face  thereof,  and  the  country  round 
about.  Where  'r  ye  stayin'  ?  " 

"  At  Townsend's." 

"  Good  man,  Brother  Townsend.     Does  a  smashing 
business.     I'll  come  and  see  you." 
f    "  We  shall  be  very  happy,  I'm  sure." 

Thenceforth  Heber  took  a  vivid  interest  in  our 
eternal  welfare.  He  quite  laid  himself  out  for  our 
conversion,  coming  to  sit  with  us  at  breakfast  in  the 
black  shadbelly,  the  nankeen  vest  and  breeches,  and 
the  truncate  cone  of  Leghorn,  which  made  him  look 
like  an  Italian  mountebank  physician  of  the  seven- 
teenth century. 

I  have  heard  men  who  could  misquote  Scripture  to 
suit  their  purpose,  and  talk  a  long  time  without  say- 
ing anything ;  but  in  both  these  particulars  Heber 
Kimball  so  far  surpassed  the  loftiest  efforts  within 
my  previous  experience,  that  I  could  think  of  no 
comparison  for  him  but  Jack  Bunsby  converted  by 
Stiggins,  and  taken  to  exhorting.  Witness  a  sam- 
ple :  — 


THE  NEW  JERUSALEM.  347 

"  Seven  women  shall  take  a  hold  o'  one  man  ! 
There ! "  (with  a  slap  on  the  back  of  the  nearest 
subject  for  regeneration.)  "What  d'ye  think  o'  that? 
Shall !  Shall  take  a  hold  on  him  !  That  don't  mean 
they  shan't,  does  it  ?  No  !  God's  word  means  what 
it  says,  and  therefore  means  no  otherwise — not  in 
no  way,  shape,  nor  manner.  Not  in  no  Way,  for  He 
saith,  '  I  am  the  way,  and  the  truth,  and  the  life.' 
Not  in  no  shape,  for  '  a  man  beholdeth  his  nat'r'l 
shape  in  a  glass ; '  nor  in  no  manner,  for  '  he  straight- 
way forgetteth  what  manner  of  man  he  was.'  Seven 
women  shall  catch  a  hold  on  him.  And  ef  they  shall, 
then  they  will !  For  everything  shall  come  to  pass, 
and  not  one  good  word  shall  fall  to  the  ground.  You 
who  try  to  explain  away  the  Scriptur'  would  make 
it  fig'rative.  But  don't  come  to  ME  with  none  o'  yer 
spiritooalizers !  Not  one  good  word  shall  fall.  There- 
fore seven  shall  not  fall.  And  ef  seven  shall  catch  a 
hold  on  him, — and,  as  I  jist  proved,  seven  will  catch  a 
hold  on  him, — then  seven  ought ;  and  in  the  latter- 
day  glory,  seven,  yea,  as  our  Lord  said  un-tew  Peter, 
'  Verily  I  say  un-tew  you,  not  seven  but  seventy  times 
seven,'  these  seventy  times  seven  shall  catch  a  hold 
and  cleave.  Blessed  day !  For  the  end  shall  be  even 
as  the  beginning,  and  seventy-fold  more  abundantly. 
Come  over  into  my  garden." 

This  invitation  always  wound  up  the  homily.  We 
gladly  accepted  it;  and  I  must  confess  that  if  there 
ever  could  be  any  hope  of  our  conversion,  it  was  just 
about  the  time  we  stood  in  Brother  Heber's  fine  or- 
chard, eating  apples  and  apricots  between  exhorta- 
tions, and  having  sound  doctrine  poked  down  our 
throats,  with  gooseberries  as  big  as  plums,  to  take  the 
taste  out  of  our  mouths,  like  jam  after  castor-oil. 


348      THE  HEART  OF  THE  CONTINENT. 

Mr.  Kimball's  city  establishment  (he  is1  a  large 
property  holder  elsewhere)  is  situated  on  a  rise  of 
ground  but  a  few  rods  from  the  Temple  corner  and 
the  President's  inclosure.  Dr.  Bernhisel,  a  former 
Congressional  delegate  from  the  Territory,  and  a  man 
possessing  much  influence  as  well  as  five  or  six  wives, 
has  a  place  in  the  same  neighborhood,  on  the  oppo- 
site side  of  the  street.  The  houses  of  both  are  neat 
and  commodious,  but  unostentatious,  like  the  resi- 
dence of  some  principal  selectman  in  a  New  England 
village.  Utah  has  not  yet  had  time  to  grow  the 
noble  elms  which  shade  such  a  residence ;  but  every- 
thing which  money,  keen  business  tact  and  indomita- 
ble energy  can  do  has  been  done  by  Heber  Kimball  at 
least,  to  make  his  place  a  paradise  of  luxuriant  vege- 
tation. In  picturesquely  selected  places  he  has  con- 
trived to  create  pretty  little  groves  of  maple,  poplar, 
acacia,  and  box  elder,  transplanting  the  young  trees 
from  the  Wahsatch  canons,  and  by  plentiful  irrigation 
making  them  grow  so  rapidly  that  they  had  already 
attained  the  respectable  height  of  twenty-five  or 
thirty  feet.  In  this  matter  of  irrigation  I  noticed 
that  both  Brothers  Brigham  and  Heber  seemed  to  be 
"  not  under  the  law,  but  under  grace."  The  chief 
water  supplies  of  the  Mormon  city  may  without  met- 
aphor be  said  to  run  through  each  apostle's  back  yard, 
and  no  hand  but  their  own  shuts  the  gate  on  their 
trenches.  The  lower  level  of  Heber  Kimball's  place, 
toward  the  city,  is  a  garden  laid  out  under  its  owner's 
supervision  by  an  old  Mormon  gardener  (Irish  or  Eng- 
lish, if  I  recollect  right)  in  whom  he  feels  great  pride, 
and  to  whom  he  evidently  seems  the  greatest  man  in 
Christendom,  or  "  partibus  Gentium."  (I  add  the  "or," 
not  knowing  precisely  with  which  class  to  pigeon-hole 

1  I  leave  this  account  in  the  present  tense,  as  written  before  its  sub- 
ject's decease. 


THE  NEW  JERUSALEM.  349 

Mormondom.)  The  plan  of  the  garden  is  as  simple 
and  natural  as  a  path  through  the  woods,  the  walks 
wandering  hither  and  thither  among  intersecting  riv- 
ulets, and  under  green  arches  of  apricot,  apple,  peach, 
plum,  and  nectarine,  whose  pleasant  -  scented  fruit, 
ripe  already  or  mellowing  to  ripeness,  bowed  their 
over-weighted  branches  together  above  our  heads. 
Heber's  melons  and  cucumbers  were  very  thrifty; 
indeed,  the  soil  and  climate  of  Utah  are  finely  suited 
to  the  cultivation  of  all  gourd  fruit.  It  was  a  week 
too  late  for  strawberries,  or,  Heber  told  me,  I  should 
have  seen  a  sight,  —  Brother  Brigham's  crop  had 
amounted  to  over  eighty  bushels,  and  he  had  gath- 
ered an  almighty  lot  himself.  Heber  was  cultivating 
a  kind  of  currant  which  he  had  introduced  from  the 
canons,  and  which  by  high  science  had  been  so  far  do- 
mesticated and  improved  that  its  fruit  was  very  pleas- 
ant, having  an  abundant  juice,  less  acid,  and  a  flavor 
no  less  pronounced,  than  our  own  large  white  currants 
at  the  East ;  furthermore,  attaining  the  weight  of  a 
good-sized  gooseberry. 

We  visited  upon  the  same  grounds,  on  the  bank  of 
one  of  those  streams  heretofore  mentioned  as  travers- 
ing apostolic  back  yards,  a  cider-mill,  a  grist-mill,  a 
feed-grinder,  a  workshop  with  lathes,  belts,  and  shaft- 
ing, and  almost  every  conceivable  mechanism  for  econ- 
omizing human  power  in  the  management  of  a  large 
estate  demanding  constant  supplies  and  repairs.  In- 
deed, in  both  Brigham  Young's  and  Heber  Kimball's 
establishments  one  sees  not  the  mere  ferme  orn&e  of  a 
proprietor  living  within  hail  of  all  the  luxuries  of 
civilization.  Such  a  man  can  afford  to  neglect  do- 
mestic manufactures, — all  that  he  wants,  from  a  tooth- 
pick to  a  steam  saw-mill,  being  manufactured  within  a 


350      THE  HEART  OF  THE  CONTINENT. 

hundred  miles,  and  sold  within  a  hundred  rods  of  his 
park  gate.  Not  so  one  of  the  Mormon  Presidents. 
He  must  have  his  resources  within  his  walls ;  any  day 
he  may  be  in  a  state  of  siege.  He  has  had  to  stand 
on  guard  all  his  life.  From  Ontario  County  to  the 
Wahsatch  canon,  the  Mormon's  only  motion  has  been 
a  sullen  retreat,  facing  the  foe  that  drove  him  back- 
ward ;  his  only  rest,  to  stand  at  bay  or  lie  in  wait  for 
the  same  foe.  He  is  the  Manfred  among  nationalities, 
—  spurned  by  his  mother,  Judaism,  and  by  the  chil- 
dren of  Christendom  alike.  By  dint  of  exquisite  craft 
and  perpetual  presents,  he  has  reduced  the  savage 
tribes  of  the  Desert  to  allies  of  his  strange  religious 
scheme.  But  he  remembers  the  time  when  his  "  La- 
manite  brother,"  as  he  now  calls  him,  had  a  disagree- 
able way  of  attacking  Mormon  trains,  and  making 
descent  on  Mormon  ranches,  and  trusts  him  as  one 
trusts  a  cat,  though  making  use  of  him  freely.  He 
remembers  Nauvoo,  Missouri,  and  Johnson's  army 
lying  at  Camp  Floyd,1  inactive  but  insulting.  Nor 
need  he  go  back  to  Buchanan's  time ;  for  there  this 
moment,  just  across  the  valley,  he  sees  white  tents 
pitched  on  the  hither  face  of  his  guarding  ridges ; 
and  over  the  cannon  which  command  his  harem 
floats  the  flag  of  a  mother  who  has  spurned  him  from 
her  door,  and  whom  he  hates  with  all  the  heart-burn- 
ing of  a  deformed  and  outcast  child.  Those  iron 
throats  that  threaten  to  bellow  at  him,  would  not 
plead  for  him  when  his  Prophet  lay  dying  by  the 
shot  of  the  assassin,  and  his  home  was  sacked  by  a 


l  The  name  of  the  great  gun-thief  of  modern  times  has  now  been  hap- 
pily erased  from  the  list  of  our  forts,  —  "  Fort  Crittenden  "  having  been 
substituted  for  "  Camp  Floyd."  It  is  a  wretched  compliment  to  Critten- 
den ;  but  bad  as  the  place  is,  it  was  worse  to  call  it  Floyd. 


THE  NEW  JERUSALEM.  351 

delirious  mob.     He  shakes  his  fist  at  them  across  the 
valley,  and  bides  his  time. 

Well  if  the  thought  of  Johnston  past,  of  Connor 
present,  were  all  that  the  apostles  had  to  disturb 
them  that  sunny  day  I  stood  by  the  water-wheel  of 
Heber's  versatile  factory !  They  had  also  to  remem- 
ber foes  within  their  body  politic, — the  revolution, 
partly  religious,  partly  political,  which  so  few  years 
ago  Brigham  was  obliged  to  quell  with  cannon ;  the 
burrowing  discontents  and  treacherous  schisms  of  the 
Legitimists,  who  look  upon  Joe  Smith's  son  as  the 
true  heir  to  the  Presidency,  and  more  or  less  openly, 
as  they  dare,  insinuate  that  the  powers  regnant  are 
usurping  a  divine  right ;  and,  last  but  not  least,  the 
miserable  jealousy  and  discontent,  existing  to  an  ex- 
tent betrayed  by  the  very  pains  taken  to  conceal  it, 
among  the  wives  of  polygamistic  marriages.  They 
always  tell  how  happy  the  women  are,  but  it  is  the 
rarest  possible  occurrence  for  a  Gentile  to  receive  an 
invitation  to  any  home  or  public  festivity  where  he 
has  an  opportunity  to  examine  this  happiness  for  him- 
self. You  also  hear  it  asserted  that  the  Smith  faction 
never  had  any  existence,  or  is  perfectly  appeased. 
George  Smith,  Joe  the  Prophet's  cousin,  occupies 
high  official  positions,  and  is  one  of  the  most  influen- 
tial men  in  the  Church.  This  fact  is  pointed  out  as 
a  proof  that  his  family  are  friendly  to  Brigham's  ad- 
ministration ;  but  the  feeling  in  favor  of  the  Smith 
succession  is  such  a  fanaticism  among  a  large  class, 
that  no  man  of  less  ability  and  popularity  than 
Young  could  keep  it  down  for  a  week ;  and  were  the 
administration  overthrown  Joe's  son,  or  some  Perkin 
Warbeck  in  place  of  him,  would  ascend  the  throne 
if  only  for  a  day  and  in  the  city.  I  think  the  Smith 


352       THE  HEART  OF  THE  CONTINENT. 

faction  would  worship  anybody  that  looked  as  if  his 
name  might  be  Smith.  There  are  other  minor  fac- 
tions whose  existence  hourly  threatens  the  stability 
of  the  government.  The  Mormon  Presidents  may 
well  live  within  walls,  and  have  their  materials  for 
independent  subsistence  close  at  hand. 

Among  other  apparatus  operated  by  Heber's  water-, 
wheel  I  observed  a  carding-machine,  and  was  told  by 
the  proprietor  that  he  had  the  entire  gear  of  a  woolen 
factory  on  a  small  scale,  and  when  it  was  set,  could 
manufacture  from  the  fleece  excellent  yarn  and  dura- 
ble cloth,  sufficient  at  least  for  all  household  uses. 

Already  (about  July  1st)  some  apples  were  ripe 
enough  in  Salt  Lake  City  to  make  good  cider,  as 
we  tested.  Specimens  of  the  fruit  we  found  quite 
spicy,  resembling  the  wine-apple  of  New  York  State 
in  size,  shape,  and  flavor.  One  day,  coming  out  of 
the  vegetable  garden  on  our  return  to  the  hotel,  we 
were  accompanied  to  the  gate  by  Heber  Kimball.  A 
cow  was  eating  the  bark  of  a  young  shade-tree  planted 
in  front  of  his  property,  having  burglariously  broken 
the  tree-box  to  get  at  it.  Heber  naturally  waxed 
wroth,  and  cudgeled  the  cow  away.  Just  then  a 
keeper  of  the  Church  cattle  passed  on  horseback, 
with  a  small  drove  in  front  of  him.  Brother  Heber 
hailed  him,  and  wished  to  know  whose  cow  this  was 
that  had  gnawed  his  tree, — was  it  the  herder's,  for 
instance?  "  It  was  not;  it  belonged  to  Brother  What- 
d'ye-cairum,  up  the  next  street  a  piece ;  he  had  a  way 
of  letting  his  cattle  run  loose."  "  Well ! "  said  Heber, 
"  this  is  the  third  time  his  cussed  cow  hez  eaten  a  tree 
of  mine,  with  the  tree-box  for  seasonin'.  Here,  herder! 
Take  this  critter,  put  her  in  your  drove,  and  this  af- 
ternoon drive  her  down  to  Church  Island  with  the 


THE  NEW  JERUSALEM.  353 

rest.  If  anybody  asks  your  authority,  say  /  told  you 
to." 

Without  a  moment's  demur  the  herder  obeyed  the 
second  President.  I  did  not  ask  whether  Brother 
What-d'ye-call-'um  had  more  than  one  cow,  and 
could  get  along  without  serious  diminution  to  his 
milk-porridge  from  the  loss  of  this  one.  But  that  was 
of  no  consequence ;  dictum  est.  That  afternoon  the 
cow  went  down  to  Church  Island,  and  was  henceforth 
as  sacred  as  among  the  Brahmins,  though  in  a  differ- 
ent sense.  She  belonged  to  the  Church  herd  —  to 
give  milk  in  life,  beef,  horn,  and  hide  in  death,  for  the 
advancement  upon  earth  of  the  Saints'  latter-day 
kingdom.  Before  I  leave  Salt  Lake  City  I  shall  say 
more  in  extenso  what  relation  "  The  Church  "  bears, 
not  only  to  such  waifs  of  emolument  as  this  cow,  but 
to  every  Mormon's  entire  property. 

During  our  stay  at  Townsend's,  we  were  one  morn- 
ing sitting  on  the  veranda,  when  our  landlord,  a 
portly,  kindly  man,  brought  up  a  friend  of  his  to  in- 
troduce to  us.  It  was  Porter  Rockwell,  the  Destroy- 
ing Angel  and  chief  of  the  Danites.  Apart  from  his 
cause,  I  felt  an  abstract  interest  in  this  old  fighter, 
and  was  glad  to  become  acquainted  with  him.  He 
welcomed  us  very  cordially  to  Utah,  and  told  us  we 
ought  to  stay :  our  only  bad  taste  was  exhibited  in 
merely  going  through.  We  could  not  avoid  telling 
him,  with  a  smile,  that  Utah  had  a  reputation  for 
stopping  people  who  showed  such  taste,  to  take  a 
permanent  residence.  He  answered  good-humoredly 
that  he  had  heard  the  rumor,  and  intended  so  far  to 
verify  it  that  he  should  halt  us  on  our  way  past  his 
door,  when  we  started  to  cross  the  desert,  put  our 
horses  in  his  own  stable,  carry  us  to  his  table,  and 


354      THE  HEART  OF  THE  CONTINENT. 

inflict  on  us  the  penalty  of  a  real  Mormon  dinner  — 
after  which  (if  our  horses  had  got  through  their  feed) 
we  should  be  let  off  with  an  admonition  never  to  try 
to  pass  his  door  if  we  came  that  way  again.  "  Bless 
yer  soul,  but  we're  savage !  "  said  Porter  Rockwell. 
"  Once  drew  a  sassige  on  a  Yankee  Gentile  myself — 
crammed  it  right  down  his  throat  with  scalding  hot 
gravy  and  pancakes.  We  Mormons  torture  'em  awful. 
The  Gentile  I  drew  the  sassige  on  bore  it  like  a  man, 
and  is  livin'  yet.  Well,  I'll  soon  see  ye  agin."  So  he 
shook  hands  with  us,  jumped  on  his  mustang,  and  am- 
bled away  as  gently  as  if,  instead  of  being  a  destroy- 
ing angel,  he  were  a  colporteur  of  peace  tracts,  or  a 
peddler  of  Winslow's  Soothing  Syrup. 

He  kept  his  word  to  us,  seeing  us  soon  and  fre- 
quently. Next  to  Brigham  Young,  he  was  the  most 
interesting  man  and  problem  that  I  encountered  in 
Utah.  His  personal  appearance  in  itself  was  very 
striking.  His  figure  was  of  the  middle  height,  and 
very  strongly  made ;  broad  across  the  shoulders,  and 
set  squarely  on  the  legs.  His  arm  was  of  large  girth, 
his  chest  round  as  a  barrel,  and  his  hand  looked  as 
powerful  as  a  grizzly  bear's.  His  face  was  of  the 
mastiff  type,  and  its  expression,  fidelity,  fearlessness, 
ferocity.  A  man  with  his  massive  lower  jaw,  firm 
mouth,  and  good-humored  but  steady  and  searching 
eyes  of  steel-blue,  if  his  fanaticism  takes  the  Mormon 
form,  must  infallibly  become  like  Porter  Rockwell. 
Organization  and  circumstances  combine  to  make  any 
such  man  a  destroying  angel.  Having  always  felt 
the  most  vivid  interest  in  supernatural  characters  of 
that  species,  I  was  familiar  with  most  of  them  from 
the  biblical  examples  of  those  who  smote  Egypt, 
Sodom,  and  Sennacherib,  to  the  more  modern  Arab, 


THE  NEW  JERUSALEM.  355 

i 

Azrael,  and  that  famous  one  who  descended,  all  white- 
bearded  and  in  shining  raiment  from  the  Judges' 
Cave,  to  lead  the  van  of  Quinnipiack's  forlorn  hope 
and  smite  the  red-skinned  Philistines.  Out  of  this 
mass  of  conflicting  and  particular  angels  I  had  ab- 
stracted an  ideal  and  general  angel;  but  when  I 
suddenly  came  on  a  real  one,  in  Porter  Rockwell,  I 
was  surprised  at  his  unlikeness  to  my  thought.  His 
hair,  black  and  iron-gray  in  streaks,  was  gathered 
into  a  cue,  just  behind  the  apex  of  the  skull,  and 
twisted  into  a  hard  round  bunch,  confined  with  a 
comb  — in  nearly  the  same  fashion  as  was  everywhere 
prevalent  among  Eastern  ladies  twenty  years  ago. 
He  was  very  obliging  in  his  manners ;  placable,  jo- 
cose, never  extravagant  when  he  conversed,  save  in 
burlesque.  If  he  had  been  converted  to  Methodism 
in  its  early  times,  instead  of  Mormonism,  he  might 
have  been  a  second  Peter  Cartwright,  preaching  and 
pummeling  his  enemies  into  the  Kingdom  instead  of 
shooting  them  to  Kingdom  Come.  No  one  ignorant 
of  his  career  would  take  him  on  sight  for  a  man  of 
bad  disposition  in  any  sense.  But  he  was  that  most 
terrible  instrument  which  can  be  handled  by  fanati- 
cism ;  a  powerful  physical  nature  welded  to  a  mind 
of  very  narrow  perceptions,  intense  convictions,  and 
changeless  tenacity.  In  his  build  he  was  a  gladiator; 
in  his  humor,  a  Yankee  lumberman ;  in  his  memory, 
a  Bourbon ;  in  his  vengeance,  an  Indian.  A  strange 
mixture,  only  to  be  found  on  the  American  Conti- 
nent. 

In  the  forenoon  of  the  Fourth  of  July,  Porter  called 
at  our  hotel  to  invite  us  to  take  a  drive  with  him.  His 
carriage  was  a  large  coach  of  the  most  ancient  Over- 
land fashion,  with  a  boot;  room  for  nine  inside  (using 


356       THE  HEART  OF  THE  CONTINENT. 

the  swing  strap  in  the  middle),  six  on  top,  and  three 
on  the  box.  He  had  bought  this  vehicle  at  the  auc- 
tion of  a  deceased  stage  company's  effects.  It  used 
to  run  from  Salt  Lake  City  to  Nephi,  or  some  other 
Mormon  settlement,  and  upon  its  emancipation  from 
these  diurnal  labors  struck  the  eye  of  the  angel,  he 
told  me,  as  the  fair  thing  to  air  the  angelic  "  ole 
wimmen  "  and  the  little  destroying  angels  in.  It  still 
bore  its  original  coat  of  flaming  vermilion,  and  the 
name  of  the  company,  if  I  recollect,  which  used  to 
employ  its  services.  It  was  just  the  chariot  for  a 
large  family  of  angelic  beings,  whose  wings  had  not 
been  sent  home  yet.  You  could  have  piled  all  the 
old  masters'  cherubim,  plus  the  supplementary  legs, 
into  the  cavern  of  Porter's  vast  coach,  without  their 
troubling  each  other  more  than  the  souls  in  the  old 
scholastic  thesis  who  dance  on  the  point  of  a  needle, 
besides  leaving  room  for  the  parental  destroyers  on 
top  and  box. 

Porter,  in  his  desire  to  do  the  hospitalities  of  the 
occasion  in  the  most  graceful  manner,  proposed  to 
mount  the  box,  and  take  the  reins  himself.  But  we 
represented,  as  was  true,  that  we  should  feel  much 
more  pleased  and  honored  if  he  gave  us  his  company 
inside  the  stage.  We  wished  to  converse  with  and 
see  this  interesting  man,  —  not  to  ride  behind  him, — 
and  so  persuaded  him  to  let  a  stable-boy  drive  for  us. 

I  do  not  know  if  I  have  stated  that  we  had  been  re- 
joined by  our  two  companions,  who  had  preceded  us 
on  our  way  from  Denver  to  Utah  as  far  as  Virginia 
Dale.  These  gentlemen,  with  Porter,  our  artist,  and 
myself,  composed  the  party  that  rode  out  to  visit  the 
Springs. 

These  are  situated  at  a  distance  of  two  or  three 


THE  NEW  JERUSALEM.  357 

miles  from  the  northern  border  of  the  city.  The 
road  thither  leads  along  the  base  of  a  peculiar  series 
of  hills  skirting  the  higher  ranges  in  all  directions 
about  the  city;  a  formation  principally  limestone,  and 
terraced  in  planes  accurately  corresponding,  across 
valleys  of  upheaval  aritsi  erosion  that  intervene.  These 
mark  the  successive  periods  of  depression  for  the 
level  of  that  great  sea  which  once  filled  the  whole 
tract  between  the  Uintah  Range  and  the  Snake  Plat- 
eau, the  Wahsatch  and  the  Humboldt  Mountains. 
Every  sedimentary  rock  stands  the  self-registering 
tide-mark  of  an  ocean  which  man  never  saw  till  it  had 
shrunk  to  its  last  puddle  in  the  present  Great  Salt 
Lake,  which  knew  no  floods,  and  had  long  eras  of 
rest,  followed  by  ebbs  comparatively  short  and  sud- 
den, but  outlasting  a  thousand  generations  of  those 
pelicans,  who,  sole  Smithsonians  of  the  period,  made 
meteorological  investigations  from  the  porphyritic 
pinnacles  of  their  observatories  across  the  sullen  and 
solitary  sea.  In  coming  to  speak  of  Salt  Lake  itself, 
I  may  give  its  geologic  history  more  in  extenso. 

Behind  the  terraced  hills  which  bounded  the  north 
road  and  rose  above  it  to  a  height  of  from  two  to  four 
hundred  feet,  Ensign  Peak,  a  lofty  projection  of  the 
Wahsatch,  came  in  view  at  frequent  intervals.  This 
is  the  Sinai  of  Mormonism,  for  it  was  on  this  peak 
that  the  Saints'  Moses,  Brigham,  met  the  spirit  of  Joe 
Smith,  and  received  his  orders  for  the  disposition  of 
the  people.  This  occurred  in  a  vision,  very  shortly, 
if  not  the  first  night,  after  the  tents  of  the  faith- 
ful were  pitched  in  sight  of  the  valley.  Near  the 
foot  of  this  peak  gush  another  set  of  thermal  waters 
besides  those  we  came  to  visit;  and  Porter  showed  us 
from  the  window  of  the  coach  the  superannuated  re- 


358       THE  HEART  OF  THE  CONTINENT. 

mains  of  an  arrangement  which  had  formerly  been 
made  to  bring  it  nearer  the  Salt  Lake  citizens  by  con- 
duits and  a  bath-house.  The  Springs  we  sought  were 
reached  by  a  ride  of  about  three  miles  from  Town- 
send's,  and  the  day  being  unusually  hot,  betrayed 
themselves  as  far  as  we  could  see  by  copious  evapora- 
tions, like  the  steam  of  a  large  laundry ;  hanging  in 
the  sultry  air  like  an  idle  cloud  over  a  mass  of  ragged 
rocks,  on  the  right  hand  of  our  road.  Reaching  them, 
we  alighted  and  spent  more  than  an  hour  in  their  ex- 
amination. 

The  rock  from  which  they  emerge  is  a  limestone, 
belonging  to  the  terrace  formation,  and  stands  at  the 
foot  of  one  of  the  bare  gray  hills  which  rise  abruptly 
from  the  road.  It  is  honeycombed  and  tunneled  for 
yards,  in  all  directions,  by  vents  and  channels. 

We  were  told  that  some  of  the  vents  eject  water 
hot  enough  to  cook  an  egg  in.  I  suppose  that  this 
statement  is  true,  meaning  a  soft  egg.  I  explored  all 
the  basins  as  far  as  I  could  get  under  the  rocks  which 
overhang  them,  and  found  several  crevices  where  the 
jets  scalded  on  instant  contact,  as  well  as  several 
deep  pools  in  which  I  could  not  bear  my  hand  more 
than  a  second.  But  water  actually  boiling  at  the 
surface  was  nowhere  visible. 

Even  in  the  hottest  pools  I  was  deeply  interested 
to  find  fresh-water  algae  growing  abundantly.  I  had 
snatched  up  the  nearest  pitcher  as  I  left  the  Fourth 
of  July  confusion  of  the  hotel,  intending  to  bring 
back  a  sample  of  the  waters.  This  I  now  found  con- 
venient for  the  collection  of  the  algae,  and  I  nearly 
blistered  my  hands  in  fishing  from  the  basins  all  the 
prettiest  specimens  within  reach.  They  were  very 
frail  —  more  like  a  mucus  or  a  jelly  than  a  plant  — 


THE  NEW  JERUSALEM.  359 

yet,  even  to  the  naked  eye,  distinctly  organized. 
Their  cellular  structure  is  even  more  visible,  now  that 
they  are  dried  and  lying  before  me  in  the  book  where 
I  pressed  them,  than  it  was  in  the  water  which  bore 
them.  I  much  regretted  having  no  good  blotting- 
book  in  so  much  of  our  dunnage  as  we  had  detained 
at  Salt  Lake,  but,  on  getting  back  with  my  algae  to 
the  hotel,  made  shift  to  use  an  old  edition  of  Corn- 
stock's  Mineralogy,  arranging  the  specimens  on  note 
paper,  putting  them  between  the  book-leaves,  and 
setting  the  foot  of  my  heavy  fore-poster  on  the  whole, 
till  such  time  as  we  should  "break  camp "  for  the 
Desert.  The  method  of  treating  these  algae  was 
similar  in  other  respects  to  that  observed -at  the  sea- 
side in  collecting  their  marine  cousins,  by  lady  enthu- 
siasts at  the  East. 

On  reaching  home  with  my  pitcher,  I  emptied  it 
into  a  pail  of  water.  When  I  saw  an  alga  floating 
naturally,  I  dipped  my  sheet  of  note  paper  under  it 
(card-board,  which  is  better,  not  being  at  hand),  and 
slowly  lifted  it,  arranging  the  forms  with  a  pin,  as 
nearly  as  I  could  in  the  way  they  swam.  Some  of 
them  were  a  string  of  inflated  globules,  in  shape  like 
the  bladder-weed  of  our  sea-shore,  but  the  bright- 
est transparent  emerald  in  color.  Others  were  only 
a  viscous  mass  like  "  frog-spittle,"  with  covered  but 
certain  traces  of  organization.  Still  others  were  tapes 
and  coils  of  a  tissue  simulating  fibre, —  the  former 
resembling  eel-grass,  the  latter  a  fine  moss  or  lichen. 
Several  amorphous  masses,  which  I  poked  asunder, 
broke  up  into  distinct  and  evident  organisms,  coming 
under  one  or  another  of  the  forms  described.  Even 
more  than  the  absence  of  our  albums  do  I  regret  that 
of  the  microscope,  which  might  have  enabled  us  to 


360      THE  HEART  OF  THE  CONTINENT. 

examine  these  specimens  in  their  fresh  state.  I  have 
nearly  a  hundred  of  the  dried  algae,  and  hope  some 
time  to  have  them  thoroughly  treated.  Their  hues 
in  nature  were  the  emerald  green  I  have  mentioned, 
a  delicate  pink  of  the  shade  sometimes  called  French 
gray,  a  lilac,  an  ashen,  an  ultramarine  blue,  and  a 
brown.  Some  of  my  specimens  still  keep  their  color 
very  well. 

The  average  temperature  of  the  water  in  the  larger 
pools  is  128°  F.  It  is  much  higher  than  that  under 
some  of  the  jets  in  whose  basins  the  algae  grow.  In 
midwinter  the  brook  which  runs  from  these  springs  is 
said  to  heat  the  air  for  many  rods  along  the  road,  so 
that  benighted  people  have  often  camped  there  as 
around  a  fire-place.  Even  on  such  a  hot  day  as  the 
Fourth  of  July  in  Salt  Lake  Valley,  the  air  was  per- 
ceptibly cooler  after  leaving  the  springs'  vicinity.  No 
other  plant  than  the  algae  grew  within  reach  of  its  wa- 
ters, nor  was  any  higher  organization  than  the  vegeta- 
ble perceptible  in  them.  That  they  do  not  contain  ani- 
mal life  no  one  can  positively  assert,  —  the  Great  Salt 
Lake  itself,  as  I  myself  have  tested,  not  being  devoid 
of  such  life,  though  its  azoic  character  was  once  uni- 
versally believed.  Nothing  of  the  kind,  however,  has 
yet  been  found  in  the  springs.  In  the  winter,  ducks, 
geese,  and  an  occasional  crane  or  pelican,  over  from 
their  cold  side  of  the  school-house  at  Salt  Lake,  with 
leave  to  stand  up  by  the  stove,  huddle  in  the  genial 
steam  of  the  reedy  level  which  drinks  the  springs' 
overflow.  We  now  had  only  a  few  solitary  magpies 
to  cheer  our  way  home  through  the  hot  dust. 

Porter  Rockwell  studiously  avoided  referring  to 
Mormonism  seriously,  though  he  seemed  willing 
enough  to  talk  about  it  in  a  playful  manner  if  any 


THE  NEW  JERUSALEM.  361 

one  else  broached  the  subject.  He  was  rough,  but  kind 
and  conciliatory,  in  everything  he  said,  and  sometimes 
very  amusing.  A  description  he  gave,  accompanied 
by  pantomime,  of  the  way  in  which  he  had  seen  a 
Goshoot  family  sitting  in  a  circle  on  their  haunches 
when  the  grasshoppers  were  plenty,  using  their  palms 
as  scoops  and  "paying"  the  insects  into  their  mouths 
with  a  windlass  motion  as  fast  as  their  hands  could 
fly,  was  irresistibly  laughable.  It  seemed  strange  to 
be  riding  in  the  carriage  and  by  the  side  of  a  man, 
who,  if  universal  report  among  the  Gentiles  were 
correct,  would  not  hesitate  to  cut  my  throat  at  the 
Church's  orders.  It  was  like  an  Assyrian  taking  an 
airing  in  the  chariot  of  the  Angel  of  Death.  I  was 
not  likely  to  become  obnoxious  to  the  Church :  I 
certainly  did  not  mean  to  be  if  I  could  help  it.  Know- 
ing I  had  been  very  careful  along  the  way  from  the 
Missouri  never  to  express  myself  before  anybody  who 
might  be  a  Mormon  spy,  I  felt  pretty  tranquil  upon 
the  subject  of  any  change  in  Porter  Rockwell  from 
his  present  agreeable  relation  of  entertainer  to  the 
less  pleasant  one  of  executioner,  though  an  hour's 
study  of  him  enabled  me  to  say  that  though,  if  he 
had  it  to  perform,  less  heart  might  be  in  his  execu- 
tion of  the  latter  than  of  the  former  function,  there 
would  be  at  any  rate  no  less  efficiency  and  sureness. 
He  had  the  reputation  of  having  killed  many  men  — 
forty,  report  said;  and  there  are  not  lacking  those 
who  suspect  him  of  still  more.  From  an  eye-witness 
I  received,  while  in  Utah,  the  following  account  of 
one  of  his  vendette.  A  Gentile  doing  business  in  Salt 
Lake  City  during  Johnston's  occupation  of  Camp 
Floyd,  suffered  oppressive  exaction  from  the  Church 
authorities ;  and  after  failing,  as  might  have  been  ex- 


362      THE  HEAKT  OF  THE  CONTINENT. 

pected,  to  get  a  decision  in  his  favor  from  a  local 
Mormon  judge  and  jury  before  whom  he  brought  his 
petition  for  relief,  he  retired  in  a  most  exasperated 
state  of  mind  to  the  United  States  encampment, — 
partly  with  a  view  to  obtaining  redress  through  John- 
ston, and  partly  for  self-protection  from  the  Danites, 
with  whom  his  prosecution  of  the  Church  had  made 
him  a  marked  man.  One  day  Porter  Kockwell  rode 
into  Camp  Floyd.  At  no  time  during  Johnston's  oc- 
cupation was  there  anything  but  the  merest  farcical 
show  of  hostilities.  Invader  and  invaded  hobnobbed 
together  at  officers'  quarters,  over  fiery  glasses  of 
"  Valley  Tan,"  (the  demoniacal  whiskey  of  the  re- 
gion) ;  Saints  and  Gentiles  winked  at  each  other  from 
the  jury-box  to  the  dock ;  the  matters  in  dispute  be- 
tween Brigham  Young  and  Buchanan  were  treated 
by  all  classes  as  a  mere  technical  squabble,  in  which 
nobody  was  hurt.  Yet,  though  the  familiarity  was 
on  both  sides,  all  the  confidence  was  on  that  of  the 
army,  which  got  regularly  plucked  in  every  trans- 
action, from  the  disgraceful  treaty  not  to  approach 
within  forty  miles  of  the  city,  to  the  buying  of  adobes, 
feed,  and  lumber.  At  no  time  during  the  burlesque 
of  invasion  was  intercourse  suspended  between  the 
Mormons  and  the  camp.  They  drove  a  thriving  busi- 
ness in  huckstering  commissariat  supplies  of  all  kinds, 
skins,  clothes,  and  moccasins,  horse-trading,  and  ev- 
ery other  branch  of  traffic  which  can  be  transacted 
between  the  shrewdest  of  camp-followers  and  a  petty 
force  of  soldiery,  hundreds  of  hostile  miles  from  their 
basis  of  supplies.  The  Mormons  spoiled  the  Egyp- 
tians they  despised ;  and  the  only  results  of  the  John- 
ston expedition  were  an  engorgement  of  the  Saints' 
exchequer,  the  passing  of  a  pretty  additional  sum  to 


THE  NEW  JERUSALEM.  363 

the  already  overloaded  side  of  Buchanan's  account 
with  the  American  people,  and  the  exacerbation  of 
the  whole  Mormon  body.  Buchanan,  through  John- 
son, simply  pinched  the  ears  and  filliped  the  noses 
of  the  Saints,  whereas  a  private  man,  or  a  ruler  of 
any  brains,  always  gives  his  enemy  a  wide  berth  or  a 
thrashing  such  as  he  never  will  forget,  on  the  maxim 
(whose  wiser  Shakespeare  never  wrote),  — 

"  Beware 

Of  entrance  to  a  quarrel ;  but,  being  in, 
Bear  it  that  the  opposed  may  beware  of  thee." 

In  accordance  with  habitual  usage,  Porter  Rockwell, 
on  the  occasion  mentioned,  rode  up  to  head-quarters 
at  Camp  Floyd,  and  was  sitting  undismounted  in  con- 
versation with  one  of  the  officers  at  the  door,  when 
the  aggrieved  plaintiff  in  the  late  suit  espied  him, 
and  approached  in  a  violent  passion. 

For  several  minutes  this  man  publicly  addressed 
Porter  Rockwell  in  every  term  of  vituperation  and 
insult  which  an  outraged  nature  could  suggest,  fur- 
thermore characterizing  Brigham  as  a  swindling  old 
scoundrel,  and  the  entire  Church  as  his  nice  little 
game  of  thimble-rig.  Not  a  muscle  of  Porter's  face 
moved  till  this  harangue  was  finished.  Then  he  very 
quietly  replied,  "  0 !  you  shoot  your  mouth  at  me, 
do  ye  ?  Well,  I'll  remember  you  some  time,"  and 
rode  away. 

A  few  days  after  that  some  officers  came  up  to  Salt 
Lake  City  on  all  night's  leave,  and,  thinking  himself 
amply  protected  by  their  escort,  the  exiled  trader 
accompanied  them.  During  the  evening  he  separated 
from  his  party,  and  went  alone  into  a  side  street  to 
call  on  a  Gentile  friend.  The  officers  never  saw  him 
again  till  he  lay  in  their  presence  with  a  revolver 


364      THE  HEART  OF  THE  CONTINENT. 

hole  from  temple  to  temple,  having  been  picked  up 
dead  a  little  while  after  he  left  them.  Of  whose  pistol 
killed  him,  there  is  no  eye-witness,  and  as  little  doubt. 

I  have  somewhat  violated  the  successions  of  time, 
that  I  might  bring  into  my  picture  of  Utah  one  of 
the  most  prominent  figures  of  the  Territory.  Before 
our  ride  with  Eockwell,  we  received  notes  of  invita- 
tion to  certain  festivities  in  the  Mormon  Academy  of 
Music,  intended  for  the  commemoration  of  our  na- 
tional independence. 

These  festivities  took  the  form  of  a  ball,  and  af- 
forded such  an  opportunity  for  studying  Mormon  so- 
ciology as  three  months'  ordinary  stay  in  Salt  Lake 
might  not  have  given  me.  Though  Mormondom  is 
disloyal  to  the  core,  it  still  patronizes  the  Fourth  of 
July,  at  least  in  its  phase  of  high-jinks,  omitting  the 
patriotism,  but  keeping  the  fireworks  of  our  Eastern 
celebration,  substituting  "  Utah"  for  "  Union  "  in  the 
Buncombe  speeches,  and  having  a  dance  instead  of  the 
Declaration  of  Independence.  All  the  Saints  within 
half  a  day's  ride  of  the  city  come  flocking  into  it  to 
spend  the  Fourth.  A  well-to-do  Mormon  at  the  head 
of  his  wives  and  children,  all  of  whom  are  probably 
eating  candy  as  they  march  through  the  metropolitan 
streets  in  solid  column,  looks,  to  the  uninitiated,  like 
the  principal  of  a  female  seminary  taking  out  his 
charge  for  an  airing. 

That  Fourth  of  July  fell  on  a  Saturday.  In  their 
ambition  to  reproduce  ancient  Judaism  (and  this  am- 
bition is  a  key  to  most  of  their  puzzles),  the  Mor- 
mons are  Sabbatarians  of  a  strictness  which  would 
delight  Lord  Shaftesbury.  Accordingly,  in  order  that 
their  festivities  might  not  encroach  on  the  early 
hours  of  Sunday  (or  "  Sabbath "  as  it  is  noticeably 


THE  NEW  JERUSALEM.  365 

called  by  all  sects  who  have  the  Jewish  idea  of  the 
day),  they  had  the  ball  on  Fourth  of  July  eve  instead 
of  the  night  of  the  Fourth.  I  could  not  realize  the 
risk  of  such  an  encroachment  when  I  read  the  follow- 
ing sentence  printed  upon  my  billet  of  invitation :  — 

"  Dancing  to  commence  at  4  p.  M." 

Our  party,  and  a  friend  whose  position  as  agent  of 
Wells  &  Fargo  ministered  unto  him  an  abundant  en- 
trance everywhere  in  Utah,  were  the  only  Gentiles 
whom  I  found  invited  by  President  Young  to  meet 
in  the  neighborhood  of  three  thousand  Saints. 

We  repaired  to  the  Opera-house  at  8  o'clock,  feel- 
ing a  certain  degree  of  remorse  at  seeming  so  "  stuck 
up "  as  the  lateness  of  our  arrival  must  make  us  in 
the  eyes  of  people  who  had  been  cutting  pigeon- 
wings  since  4  p.  M. 

On  entering  the  theatre,  we  were  surprised  to  see 
how  remarkably  it  had  been  improved  since  we  stood 
on  the  stage  in  daylight,  listening  to  Heber  Kimball, 
and  seeing  the  women  busy  in  the  preparation  of  the 
festive  trimmings.  Fragrant  ropes  of  evergreen  hung 
in  symmetrical  festoons  from  the  cornice  and  the 
edge  of  the  galleries ;  others  wound  spirally  about 
the  pillars,  and  wreathed  the  capitals.  A  great  cen- 
tral chandelier  was  similarly  ornamented,  while  in- 
terspersed among  the  pine  and  cedar  were  immense 
garlands  and  bunches  of  natural  flowers,  native  and 
exotic,  freshly  plucked  that  day  to  lay  upon  Brig- 
ham's  shrine.  The  lights  were  so  abundant  that  in 
the  galleries  the  heat  was  oppressive,  and  the  whole 
house  was  illuminated  nearly  as  well  as  could  have 
been  accomplished  by  gas.  The  boundary  between 
stage  and  parquet  having  been  obliterated  by  plank- 
ing over  the  seats  flush  with  the  former,  the  whole 


366       THE  HEART  OF  THE  CONTINENT. 

area  of  both  was  thrown  open  to  the  dancers,  mak- 
ing as  commodious  a  ball-room  as  could  be  desired 
by  any  pleasure-seekers  in  the  world.  A  Mormon 
band  gave  vent  to  the  music  of  the  occasion.  As 
they  did  not  pretend  to  be  Dodworths,  Thomases, 
Koenigs,  or  anything  of  the  sort,  it  would  be  unfair 
to  criticise  them  closely ;  but  I  will  say  that  I  could 
better  understand  that  immemorial  usage  which  has 
restricted  Saints  to  the  use  of  the  harp,  after  hearing 
their  performance  on  other  instruments.  They  played, 
however,  quite  as  well  as  the  ball-room  bands  of  most 
Eastern  towns  no  larger  than  Salt  Lake  City,  if  we 
except  those  whose  population  has  become  somewhat 
Teutonized :  and  what  they  lacked  in  quality,  they 
made  up  in  quantity.  The  Mormon  principle  of  de- 
voting to  the  Church  one  tenth  of  all  a  man  is  and 
has,  was  fully  exemplified  by  the  violins  who  gave  it 
in  the  form  of  elbow,  and  by  the  trombones  who  blew 
that  proportion  of  their  annual  increase  into  the  ears 
of  the  Saints  during  the  first  four  contra-dances. 
The  merry-makers  at  any  rate  enjoyed  the  music  as 
much  as  if  it  had  been  Musard's,  which,  after  all,  was 
the  only  matter  of  consequence. 

We  sought  out  our  entertainer,  Brigham  Young, 
to  thank  him  for  the  flattering  exception  made  in  our 
Gentile  favor.  He  was  standing  in  the  dress-circle 
of  the  theatre,  looking  down  on  the  dancers  with  an 
air  of  mingled  hearty  kindness  and  feudal  ownership. 
I  could  excuse  the  latter,  for  Utah  belongs  to  him  of 
right.  He  may  justly  say  of  it,  "  Is  not  this  great 
Babylon  which  I  have  built?"  Like  any  Eastern 
party-goer,  he  was  habited  in  the  "  customary  suit  of 
solemn  black,"  and  looked  very  distinguished  in  this 
dress,  though  his  daily  homespun  detracts  nothing 


THE  NEW  JERUSALEM.  367 

from  the  feeling,  when  in  his  presence,  that  you  are 
beholding  a  most  remarkable  man.  He  is  nearly  sev- 
enty years  old,  but  appears  very  little  over  forty.  His 
height  is  about 

"  five  feet  ten, 

The  height  of  Lord  Chesterfield's  gentlemen  ;  " 

his  figure  very  well  made,  and  slightly  inclining  to 
portliness.  His  hair  is  a  rich  curly  chestnut,  for- 
merly worn  long,  in  supposed  imitation  of  the  apos- 
tolic coiffure,  but  now  cut  in  our  practical  Eastern 
fashion,  as  accords  with  the  man  of  business  whose 
metier  he  has  added  to  apostleship,  with  the  growing 
temporal  prosperity  of  Zion.  Indeed,  he  is  the  great- 
est business  man  on  the  Continent,  —  the  head  and 
cashier  of  a  firm  of  one  hundred  thousand  silent 
partners,  and  the  only  auditor  of  that  cashier  besides. 
Brigham  Young's  eyes  are  a  clear  blue-gray,  frank 
and  straightforward  in  their  look ;  his  nose  a  finely 
chiseled  aquiline;  his  mouth  exceedingly  firm,  and 
fortified  in  that  expression  by  a  chin  almost  as  pro- 
trusive beyond  the  rest  of  the  profile  as  Charlotte 
Cushman's,  though  less  noticeably  so,  being  longer 
than  hers ;  and  he  wears  a  narrow  ribbon  of  brown 
whiskers  meeting  on  the  throat.  But  for  his  chin,  he 
would  greatly  resemble  the  best  portraits  of  Sidney 
Smith,  the  humorist.  I  think  I  have  heard  Captain 
Burton  say  that  he  had  irregular  teeth,  which  made 
his  smile  unpleasant.  Shortly  after  the  Captain's  visit, 
our  benevolent  President  altered  all  that,  sending  out 
as  Territorial  Secretary  Mr.  Fuller,  who,  besides  being 
a  successful  politician,  was  an  excellent  dentist.  He 
secured  Brigham's  everlasting  favor  by  making  him  a 
very  handsome  false  set,  and  performing  the  same 
service  for  all  of  his  favorite  but  edentate  wives. 


368      THE  HEART  OF  THE  CONTINENT. 

Several  other  apostles  of  the  Lord  owe  to  Mr.  Fuller 
their  ability  to  gnash  their  teeth  against  the  Gentiles. 
The  result  was,  that  he  became  the  most  popular 
Federal  officer  (who  didn't  turn  Mormon)  ever  sent 
to  Utah.  The  man  who  obtains  ascendency  over  the 
mouths  of  the  authorities  cannot  fail  ere  long  to  get 
their  ears. 

Brigham's  manners  astonish  any  one  who  knows 
that  his  only  education  was  a  few  quarters  of  such 
common-school  education  as  could  be  had  in  Ontario 
County,  Central  New  York,  during  the  early  part  of 
the  century.  There  are  few  courtlier  men  living. 
His  address  is  a  fine  combination  of  dignity  with  the 
desire  to  confer  happiness,  of  perfect  deference  to  the 
feelings  of  others  with  absolute  certainty  of  himself 
and  his  own  opinions.  He  is  a  remarkable  example 
of  the  educating  influence  of  tactful  perception  wed- 
ded to  entire  singleness  of  aim,  without  regard  to  its 
moral  character.  His  early  life  was  passed  among 
the  uncouth  and  illiterate  ;  any  tow-headed  boy  com- 
ing into  the  Clifton  Water-cure  to  sell  Ontario  County 
maple-sugar  has,  to  all  external  appearance,  a  better 
chance  of  reaching  supreme  command  than  Brigham 
had  in  his  childhood ;  his  daily  associations  since  he 
embraced  Mormonism  have  been  with  the  least  culti- 
vated grades  of  human  society,  a  heterogenous  horde, 
looking  to  him  for  its  erection  into  a  nation ;  yet  ne 
has  so  clearly  seen  what  is  requisite  in  the  man  who 
would  be  respected  in  the  Presidency,  and  has  so  un- 
reservedly devoted  his  life  to  its  attainment,  that  in 
protracted  conversation  with  him,  I  heard  only  a  sin- 
gle solecism  ("  ain't  you  "  for  "  aren't  you  "),  and  saw 
not  one  instance  of  breeding  which  would  be  incon- 
sistent with  noble  lineage. 


THE  NEW  JERUSALEM.  369 

,  I  say  this  good  of  him  frankly,  disregarding  any 
slur  which  may  be  cast  on  me  as  his  defender  by 
those  broad-effect  artists  who  always  paint  the  Devil 
black ;  for  I  think  it  high  time  that  the  Mormon  ene- 
mies of  our  American  idea  should  be  plainly  under- 
stood as  far  more  dangerous  antagonists  than  hypo- 
crites or  idiots  can  ever  hope  to  be.  Let  us  not  twice 
commit  the  blunder  of  underrating  our  foes. 

Brigham  began  our  conversation  at  the  theatre  by 
telling  me  I  was  late  —  it  was  after  9  o3 clock.  I  re- 
plied that  this  was  the  time  we  usually  set  about 
dressing  for  an  evening  party  in  Boston  or  New 
York. 

"  Yes,"  said  he,  "  you  find  us  an  old-fashioned  peo- 
ple ;  we  are  trying  to  return  to  the  healthy  habits  of 
the  patriarchal  age." 

"  Need  you  go  back  so  far  as  that  for  your  paral- 
lel?" suggested  I.  "It  strikes  me  that  we  might  have 
found  four-o'clock  balls  among  the  early  Christians." 

He  smiled,  without  that  offensive  affectation  of 
some  great  men,  the  air  of  taking  another's  joke  un- 
der their  gracious  patronage,  and  went  on  to  remark 
that  there  were,  unfortunately,  multitudinous  differ- 
ences between  the  Mormons  and  Americans  at  the 
East  besides  the  hours  they  kept. 

"  You  find  us,"  said  he,  "  trying  to  live  peaceably. 
A  sojourn  with  people  thus  minded  must  be  a  great 
relief  to  you,  who  come  from  a  land  where  brother 
hath  lifted  hand  against  brother,  and  you  hear  the 
confused  noise  of  the  warrior  perpetually  ringing  in 
your  ears." 

Despite  the  courtly  deference  and  scriptural  dig- 
nity of  this  speech,  I  detected  in  it  a  latent  crow  over 
that  "  perished  Union,"  which,  up  to  the  time  of  Lee's 

24 


370       THE  HEART  OF  THE  CONTINENT. 

surrender  was  the  favorite  theme  of  every  Saint  one 
met  in  Utah,  and  hastened  to  assure  the  President 
that  I  had  no  desire  for  relief  from  sympathy  with 
my  country's  struggle  for  honor  and  existence. 

The  Opera-house  was  a  subject  which  Brigham  and 
I  could  agree  upon.  I  was  greatly  astonished  to  find 
in  the  desert  heart  of  the  Continent  a  place  of  pub- 
lic amusement  which,  regarding  comfort,  capacity, 
and  beauty,  has  but  two  or  three  superiors  in  the 
United  States.  It  is  internally  constructed  somewhat 
like  the  New  York  Academy  of  Music,  seats  twenty- 
five  hundred,  and  commodiously  receives  five  hun- 
dred more  when,  as  in  the  present  instance,  the  stage 
is  thrown  into  the  parquet.  My  greatest  surprise  was 
excited  by  the  remarkable  artistic  beauty  of  the  gilt 
and  painted  decorations  on  the  great  arch  over  the 
stage,  the  cornices,  and  the  moulding  about  the  pro- 
scenium boxes.  President  Young,  with  a  proper  pride, 
assured  me  that  every  particle  of  the  ornamental 
work  was  by  indigenous  and  Saintly  hands. 

"But  you  don't  know  yet,"  he  added,  ".how  inde- 
pendent we  are  of  you  at  the  East.  Where  do  you 
think  we  got  that  central  chandelier,  and  what  d'ye 
suppose  we  paid  for  it  ?  " 

It  was  a  piece  of  work  which  would  have  been 
creditable  to  any  New  York  firm,  apparently  a  richly 
carven  circle,  twined  with  gilt  vines,  leaves,  and  ten- 
drils, blossoming  all  over  with  flaming  wax-lights,  and 
suspended  by  a  massive  chain  of  golden  lustre.  So  I 
replied  that  he  probably  paid  a  thousand  dollars  for 
it  in  New  York. 

"Capital!"  exclaimed  Brigham;  "/made  it  myself! 
That  circle  is  a  cartwheel,  the  wheel  of  one  of  our 
common  Utah  ox-carts.  I  had  it  washed,  and  gilded 


THE  NEW  JERUSALEM.  371 

it  with  my  own  hands.  It  hangs  by  a  pair  of  ox- 
chains,  which  I  also  gilded ;  and  the  gilt  ornaments 
of  the  candlesticks  were  all  cut  after  my  patterns  out 
of  sheet  tin  !  " 

This  is  but  one  among  a  thousand  illustrations  of 
the  versatility  which  characterizes  this  truly  remark- 
able man.  They  are  familiar  to  every  Mormon  ;  you 
can  go  nowhere  in  the  Territory  without  hearing 
them  admiringly  recounted  by  the  people.  As  I 
have  said,  in  the  society  sense  of  the  word,  Brigham 
is  far  from  being  an  educated  man.  He  knows  nei- 
ther Latin,  Greek,  nor,  so  far  as  I  am  aware,  any 
modern  foreign  language,  unless,  perhaps,  like  several 
prominent  men  among  his  subordinates,  he  has  ac- 
quired sufficient  acquaintance  with  the  dialects  of 
Shoshone,  Ute,  and  other  neighboring  Indian  tribes, 
to  help  in  their  reduction  to  the  condition  of  tools 
and  emissaries  of  the  Church.  I  am  not  at  all  sure 
that  he  possesses  even  this  slight  lingual  accomplish- 
ment, for,  as  I  may  hereafter  show,  the  division  of 
labor  has  been  so  clearly  systematized,  that  even  the 
business  of  learning  Indian  is  apportioned  chiefly  to 
a  class  of  Mormons  who,  when  occasion  demands,  can 
assume  all  the  other  characteristics  of  red-deviltry,  as 
well  as  the  use  of  those  incoherent  grunts  which  con- 
stitute its  language.  Brigham's  knowledge  of  mathe- 
matics stops  at  a  moderate  practical  acquaintance 
with  surveying,  and  the  ability  to  keep  books  with  a 
particularly  cheerful  credit  side.  Every  deficiency 
in  the  matter  of  polite  education  which  his  enemies 
can  lay  to  his  charge,  Brigham  acknowledges  with  a 
simple-hearted  frankness  and  an  evident  appreciation 
of  the  advantages  denied  his  youth,  challenging  the 
admiration  of  all  fair  minds  far  more  than  any  mere 


372  THE  HEART  OF  THE   CONTINENT. 

accomplishment  could.  In  hearing  him,  one  naturally 
feels  that  Brigham  must  possess  some  compensatory 
gifts  and  acquirements,  in  whose  presence  ordinary 
attainments  become  a  matter  of  trifling  moment,  and 
that  the  man  able  to  confess  his  weak  places  with  such 
modest  dignity  has  elements  of  strength  within  him 
sufficient  to  brace  them,  even  in  the  most  trying  exi- 
gencies of  his  life.  Among  such  elements,  his  versa- 
tility is  by  no  means  the  least.  The  great  American 
talent  of  un-cornerableness ;  the  habit  of  always  striking 
on  one's  feet ;  that  Promethean  faculty  which  in  the 
grand  passage  where  Zeus  sends  his  blacksmiths  to 
rivet  the  Titan  down  on  Caucasus,  .ZEschylus  through 
the  mouth  of  Force  calls  the  ability  to  break  away — 

"  EK  TWV  a/x^avwv  /ca/cwv  "  — 

"out  of  unengineerable  evils,"  —  this,  Brigham  Young 
enjoys  to  a  degree  which  I  have  never  seen  surpassed 
in  any  great  man  of  any  nation.  He  cannot  be  put 
into  a  position  where  he  is  at  the  end  of  his  resources ; 
earthly  circumstances  never  take  to  him  the  form  of 
a  cul  de  sac.  He  has  been  at  a  college  whose  presi- 
dent is  Multiform  Experience,  whose  matron  is  Inex- 
orable Necessity.  If  he  were  obliged  to  support 
himself  by  farming,  he  understands  soils,  stock,  tools, 
rotation,  irrigation,  manures,  and  all  the  agricultural 
economies  so  well  that  he  would  speedily  have  the 
best  crops  within  a  hundred  miles'  radius.  With  his 
own  hands  he  would  put  the  best  house  in  the  settle- 
ment over  the  heads  of  himself  and  his  family,  while 
other  Desert  Islanders  in  a  ship-load  of  Crusoes  were 
bewailing  the  loss  of  their  carpenter.  On  Sundays 
he  can  preach  sermons  cogent  and  full  of  common 
sense,  if  not  elegant  or  always  free  from  indelicacy. 


THE  NEW  JERUSALEM.  373 

On  week-days  he  sits  in  the  Church  office,  managing 
a  whole  nation's  temporalities  with  such  secular  as- 
tuteness that  Talleyrand  or  Richelieu  would  find  him 
a  match  should  the  morning's  game  be  diplomatic, 
and  the  Rothschild  family  could  not  get  ahead  of  him 
if  the  stake  were  a  financial  advantage.  On  the  per- 
ilous and  untried  road  to  Utah,  he  was  faith,  wisdom, 
energy,  patience,  expedients,  courage,  enthusiasm, 
veritable  life  and  soul  to  all  the  fainting  Saints ;  they 
never  would  have  reached  the  Rocky  Mountain  water- 
shed, much  less  the  Great  Salt  Basin,  without  him ; 
he  was  the  grand  incarnate  will  and  purpose  of  the 
Mormons'  fiercely  tried  fanaticism;  and  though  he 
naively  said  to  me,  in  speaking  of  the  height  of  En- 
sign Peak,  "  I  got  Brother  Pratt,  who  had  the  book- 
learning,  to  take  the  observations,  not  knowing 
enough  about  such  things  to  do  it  myself,"  there  was 
not  a  "  slewed "  ox-cart  on  the  way  to  that  peak's 
base,  at  whose  wheel  his  was  not  the  first  and  stur- 
diest shoulder ;  and  after  wrestling  with  angels  or 
remaining  instant  in  prayer  all  night,  he  could  yoke 
up  his  team,  and  trudge  along  by  its  travel-chafed 
necks,  urging  it  on  with  ge-haws  as  cheerful  and  get- 
ting out  of  his  black-snake  cracks  as  resonant  as  the 
lightest-hearted  bumpkin  in  a  smock  frock.  In  a  new 
country  and  an  infant  civilization,  specific  gravities 
take  care  of  such  a  man's  position  ;  he  infallibly  de- 
termines to  the  top  of  things,  and  will  though  he 
hide  himself,  less  like  Brigham  than  Saul  the  son  of 
Kish,  among  the  stuff.  He  must  govern,  because  he 
is  the  only  one  of  his  lot  who  is  necessary  to  every- 
body ;  he  is  not  elected,  but  he  is ;  not  because  he  is 
fortunate,  an  heir  of  the  past,  but  because  among 
men  he  is  the  manliest,  and  thus  what  Homer  meant, 


374       THE  HEART  OF  THE  CONTINENT. 

not  the  king  of  lands  and  coffers,  but  "  ava%  avfy&v" 
— the  king  of  men  !  I  believe  that  Brigham  Young 
was  brought  out  by  Mormonism ;  but  I  believe  that  if 
any  other  cause  with  which  he  might  have  identified 
himself  had  taken  as  strong  possession  of  his  nature, 
it  would  have  developed  him  as  fully,  and  that  with 
the  usual  Christian  creed  and  training,  he  would  have 
made  another  Beecher  in  the  pulpit,  another  Webster 
in  the  Senate,  and  a  Sherman  in  the  army  unsurpassed 
by  Tecumseh. 

I  excused  myself  from  numerous  kind  invitations 
by  the  ball-room  committee  to  be  introduced  to  a 
partner  and  join  in  the  dances,  because  (though  I  did 
not  give  my  reason  then)  I  wished  to  make  a  circuit 
of  the  ball-room  for  the  purpose  of  thorough  physi- 
ognomical study  of  Utah  good  society. 

There  was  very  little  taste  in  dressing  displayed  at 
the  ball,  but  there  was  also  as  little  ostentation.  Pa- 
trician silks  and  broadcloths  were  the  rare  exception, 
but  these  cordially  associated  with  the  great  mass  of 
plebeian  tweed  and  calico.  Few  ladies  wore  jewelry, 
feathers,  or  artificial  flowers ;  and  these  adornments, 
when  I  saw  them,  seemed  to  have  been  drawn  from 
trunks  which  had  crossed  the  Plains  and  the  Moun- 
tains, perhaps  also  the  Atlantic  previously  to  either  — 
the  breast-pins,  and  ear-rings  being  of  that  red  gold 
and  slender  workmanship  which  delighted  our  revolu- 
tionary ancestors ;  the  head-gear  of  an  exuberance 
so  ancient  that  it  has  just  completed  its  cycle,  and 
become  the  mode  again  in  this  age  of  top-heavy 
belles  with  bushel-baskets  of  finery  dumped  on  their 
heads  and  left  to  stay  there  higgledy-piggledy — just 
as  a  toy-watch,  by  standing  still  forever,  once  a  day 
tells  the  time  as  truly  as  the  sun.  There  were  some 


THE  NEW  JERUSALEM.  375 

pretty  girls,  -like  those  who  came  to  Brigham,  swim- 
ming about  in  tasteful  whip-syllabub  of  puffed  tarla- 
tan. Where  saintly  gentlemen  came  with  several 
wives,  the  oldest  generally  seemed  the  most  elabor- 
ately dressed,  and  acted  much  like  an  Eastern  chape- 
ron toward  her  younger  sisters.  (Wives  of  the  same 
man  habitually  be-sister  each  other  in  Utah.  This  is 
what  Heber  Kimball  would  call  another  "  triumph  of 
grace.")  Among  the  men,  I  saw  some  very  strong, 
capable  faces,  but  the  majority  had  not  much  charac- 
ter in  their  looks ;  indeed,  in  that  regard  differed  little 
from  any  average  crowd  of  men  anywhere.  To  my 
surprise,  I  found  among  the  women  no  really  de- 
graded faces,  though  many  stolid  ones,  many  impas- 
sive ones ;  but  only  a  single  face  expressive  of  deep 
dejection,  and  this  belonged  to  the  wife  of  a  hitherto 
monogamic  husband  who  had  left  her  alone  in  the 
dress  circle,  while  he  was  dancing  with  a  chubby 
young  Mormoness  likely  to  be  added  to  the  family  in 
a  month  or  two.  Though  I  saw  multitudes  of  kindly, 
good- tempered  countenances,  and  at  least  a  score 
which  would  be  called  pretty  anywhere,  I  was  obliged, 
after  a  most  impartial  and  anxious  .search,  to  confess 
that  I  had  not  met  a  single  woman  who  looked  high- 
toned,  first-class,  capable  of  poetic  enthusiasm  or  he- 
roic self-devotion ;  not  a  single  woman  whom  an  ar- 
tist would  dream  of,  and  ask  to  sit  for  a  study ;  not 
one  to  whom  a  finely  organized  intellectual  man  could 
come  for  companionship  in  his  pursuits  or  sympathy 
in  his  yearnings.  Because  I  knew  that  such  a  verdict 
would  be  received  at  the  East  with  a  "  Just  as  you 
might  have  expected,"  I  cast  aside  everything  like 
prejudice,  and  forgot  that  I  was  in  Utah,  as  I  threaded 
that  great  throng. 


CHAPTER  VIII. 

THE  DEAD  SEA.— THE  PHYSICAL  GEOGRAPHY  AND 
HISTORY  OF   ITS  BASIN. 

WE  were  distributed  into  two  hacks  of  an  ancient 
yet  comfortable  build,  and  carried  a  hamper  of  pro- 
visions to  provide  against  the  occasional  leanness 
which  is  found  in  -  the  larders  of  the  only  human 
dwelling  at  Black  Rock.  The  day  was  bright  and 
breezy,  the  ponies  in  good  spirits,  and  the  road  in 
nice  condition. 

The  nearest  point  from  Salt  Lake  City  at  which 
one  may  strike  the  lake  by  following  a  straight  line, 
is  only  about  ten  miles  in  a  northerly  direction  from 
the  suburbs.  The  River  Jordan  pursues  nearly  this 
direction  from  the  city  to  its  mouth ;  but  the  shore  of 
the  Dead  Sea,  where  it  discharges,  is  low,  swampy,  and 
uninteresting.  The  most  favorable  place  to  strike  the 
lake  is  nearly  twenty  miles  west  of  the  city,  the 
scenery  there  being  beautiful  and  unique  beyond  de- 
scription. 

This  point  is  called  "  Black  Rock,"  from  a  weath- 
ered boulder  of  peculiar  shape,  projecting  boldly  into 
the  lake  at  the  extremity  of  a  low  reach  of  shingle, 
and  may  be  regarded  as  the  farthest  northern  ex- 
tremity of  the  Oquirrh  Mountains,  that  lofty  ridge  to 
the  westward  of  the  city,  which,  with  the  loftier  snow- 
range  of  the  Wahsatch  running  parallel  on  the  east, 
forms  the  cradle  of  the  Mormon  capital,  and  the  more 


THE   DEAD  SEA.  377 

or  less  fertile  valley  of  the  Jordan.  It  would  be 
nearer  correct  to  call  Black  Eock  the  most  northerly 
main-land  extremity  of  the  Oquirrh ;  for  Church  and 
Fremont  Islands  take  up  the  broken  line  of  the  range, 
and  carry  it  nearly  across  to  the  great  promontory 
which  juts  many  miles  into  the  lake  from  the  north- 
ern shore  to  form  Bear  Kiver  Bay. 

Just  after  leaving  the  eastern  edge  of  the  city,  our 
road  crossed  the  Jordan,  here  a  sluggish  stream,  eight 
or  ten  rods  wide,  with  low  fenny  shores  steaming  un- 
der the  sun,  and  exhibiting  no  signs  of  life  or  cultiva- 
tion. From  the  low  wooden  bridge  straight  west- 
ward to  the  Oquirrh,  the  land  is  an  alluvial  flat,  boggy 
and  reedy  wherever  it  can  be  reached  by  the  overflow 
of  the  Jordan,  covered  with  a  loose  soil  on  the  sur- 
face of  the  terraces  marking  those  successive  levels 
of  elevation  to  which  I  have  referred  in  speaking  of 
the  hot  springs  and  their  vicinity.  On  this  ascending 
series  of  plains,  no  trees  or  large  shrubs  are  anywhere 
visible.  The  vegetation  of  the  moister  portions 
chiefly  consists  of  various  sedges,  rushes,  and  grasses : 
comprising  an  Equisetum,  or  scouring  rush ;  a  species  of 
Jimcus  (the  Batticus,  qu.  =Bulbosus?);  the  blue-eyed, 
feather,  hedgehog,  and  squirrel- tail  grasses  (Sisyrin- 
chium,  Eriocoma,  or  Stipa,  Elymus,  and  Hordeum)',  with 
a  variety  of  Scirpus,  or  club-rush,  and  of  the  Ckara, 
or  feather-bed  plant,  in  the  pools  and  marshes.  On 
the  higher  levels,  our  old  comrade,  the  sage,  ap- 
pears again,  and  a  plant  somewhat  resembling  it  in 
fetid  pungency,  the  hemlock  geranium  (Erodmm  Ci- 
cutarium).  The  yarrow  (Achillea  Mittefolia)  exists  here, 
as,  indeed,  it  seems  to  exist  over  the  whole  Continent, 
having  followed  us  through  every  change  of  climate 
and  physical  condition  over  mountain  and  plain,  from 


378       THE  HEART  OF  THE  CONTINENT. 

the  Atlantic  side.  The  same  may  be  said  of  the  As 
clepias,  or  milkweed  family,  which,  in  the  Rocky 
Mountains  as  well  as  here,  appears  in  much  greater 
profusion  and  number  of  varieties  than  at  the  far 
East.  Here,  too,  are  those  other  cosmopolites  of  the 
flora,  the  fleabane  (Erigerori) ;  the  golden-rod,  the 
mouse-ear,  a  variety  of  the  evening  primrose ;  one  or 
more  of  the  asters;  a  gentian;  the  Argemone,  or 
"  horn-poppy;  "  the  veined  dock  (Rumex  Venosus),  the 
true  and  the  bastard  toad-flax  (Antirrhinum  and  Co- 
mandra) ;  a  hogweed  (Ambrosia) ;  many  leguminous 
tribes ;  a  species  of  thistle,  a  clematis,  and  the  wild 
rose.  These  reveal  themselves  to  minute  research ; 
in  a  single  afternoon,  and  without  going  two  miles 
from  the  road,  a  botanist,  with  well  trained  powers  of 
observation,  might  discover  them  all,  and  many  more 
possessing  considerable  beauty  and  marked  interest, 
from  the  fact  that  they  are  peculiar  to  the  region. 
But  the  country  in  its  general  view,  as  taken  from 
the  road,  possesses  no  salient  features.  It  is  a  dreary 
waste  of  sun-scorched  brown,  excepting  in  the  spots, 
few  and  far  between,  where  the  stinginess  of  the 
heavens  has  been  supplemented  by  human  industry, 
and  the  melted  largess  of  the  snow-range  brought 
down  to  nourish  vegetable  life  by  irrigating  appara- 
tus in  the  form  of  conduits,  where  that  is  possible ; 
by  windmills,  pumps,  reservoirs,  and  ditches,  where 
the  mountains  are  too  far  off  to  afford  the  quantity 
and  force  of  water  requisite  for  a  steady  current 
through  the  thirsty  fields,  or  where  the  Jordan  and 
its  tributaries  run  in  the  immediate  neighborhood. 
In  the  month  of  July  the  cereals  are  ripe  for  the 
sickle;  and  Brigham  Young  himself  told  me  that  on 
a  tract  which  he  had  seen,  and  belonging,  if  I  remem- 


THE  DEAD   SEA.  379 

her  rightly,  to  himself,  eighty  bushels  of  wheat  had 
been  raised  to  the  single  acre.  Astonishing  as  this 
crop  appears  in  comparison  with  the  best  results  of 
our  Eastern  farming,  it  did  not  surprise  me  after  I 
had  seen  the  standing  grain  upon  vast  fields,  on 
whose  irrigation  no  expense  had  been  spared,  and 
whose  product  was  like  a  solid  vegetable  plush  or 
green  velvet,  the  threads  in  whose  pile  were  six  feet 
high,  and  so  closely  packed  together  that  they  had 
scarcely  room  to  bend  under  the  wind,  and  the  field 
seemed  to  ripple  merely  on  its  surface  in  chasing 
waves  of  sun  and  shadow.  Nor  does  it  astonish  any 
one  who  compares  the  soil  of  Utah  with  the  analysis 
of  those  inorganic  substances  which  wheat  must  de- 
rive from  the  soil.  Sprengel's  analysis  gives  the  fol- 
lowing result  for  the  11.77  Ibs.  of  ash  left  after  the 
combustion  of  1,000  Ibs.  of  grain  wheat,  and  the  35.18 
Ibs.  remaining  from  an  equal  weight  of  similarly 
treated  wheat  straw  :  — 

The  results  are  expressed  in  pounds  and  decimals  of  pounds. 


GRAIN. 

STRAW. 

Potash  

.     2.25 

0.20 

Soda         

2.40 

0.29 

Lime    ....... 

.     0.96 

2.40 

Magnesia  ...... 

0.90 

0.32 

Alumina  (with  a  trace  of  iron)     . 

.     0.26 

0.90 

Silica        

4.00 

28.70 

0.50 

0.37 

0.40 

1.70 

Chlorine       ...... 

.     0.10 

0.30 

The  decomposed  feldspar  and  limestone  which  con- 
stitute the  soil  of  the  terraces,  consist  as  follows  : 
The  feldspar,  of  silica,  64.8;  alumina,  18.4;  potash, 
16.8  per  cent.;  or,  silica,  68.7;  alumina,  19.5;  soda, 
11.8;  and  in  some  cases  of  20  per  cent,  of  lime  re- 
placing the  other  alkalies,  with  a  nearly  equal  division 


380       THE  HEART  OF  THE  CONTINENT. 

of  the  remaining  80  per  cent,  between  silica  and 
alumina :  the  limestone,  of  sulphates,  phosphates,  and 
carbonates  in  various  proportions,  the  last  frequently 
associated  in  the  form  of  dolomite  with  carbonate  of 
magnesia  to  the  extent  of  nearly  half  the  weight 
Chlorine  necessarily  abounds  in  a  soil  which  at  one 
time  was  covered  by  a  solution  of  its  product  with  so- 
dium; and  were  not  sulphur  plentifully  supplied  by 
the  decomposition  of  gypsum,  enough  of  it  exists  in 
the  virgin  state  throughout  Utah  to  furnish  material 
for  crops  demanding  it.  In  the  sesquioxide,  the  sul- 
phide, the  chloride,  and  numerous  other  combinations, 
iron  is  found  throughout  the  detritus  of  all  rocks 
which  have  formed  portions  of  the  ancient  lake  bor- 
der. A  soil  could  scarcely  be  prepared  in  the  labor- 
atory by  artificial  synthesis,  better  adapted  for  the 
growth  of  the  cereals.  The  only  desideratum  which 
gives  the  Mormon  farmer  any  anxiety  is  water. 
Even  on  the  desert,  the  lack  of  this  element  is  the 
only  obstacle  to  a  successful  cultivation  of  wheat, 
rye,  oats,  and  barley.  In  the  vicinity  of  the  springs, 
of  artesian  wells,  or  of  the  little  rivulets  born  on  the 
summits  of  the  independent  peaks  (the  "  lost  moun- 
tains "  as  the  natives  poetically  express  their  isola- 
tion), and  managing  to  reach  the  level  without  entire 
absorption  by  the  hot  sands,  the  luxuriant  green 
which  marks  the  oasis  proves  how  rich  the  desert  is 
in  every  solid  element  of  fertility.  Before  leaving 
Utah,  I  shall  endeavor  to  show  that  a  large,  if  not 
the  greater,  proportion  of  all  the  barren  tract  now 
called  "  desert,"  as  legitimately  to  all  appearance  as 
that  of  Sahara,  may  be  converted  by  the  outlay  of 
comparatively  small  labor  and  capital,  under  the  guid- 
ance of  scientific  enlightenment,  into  a  district  no 


THE  DEAD   SEA.  381 

less  productive  of  all  vegetable  food  demanded  by 
the  necessities  of  human  life  than  the  areas  most  fa- 
mous for  fertility  in  the  Genesee,  Ohio,  and  Missis- 
sippi Valleys.  At  present  let  us  return  to  our  road. 

The  dull,  tawny  hue  of  the  bare  ground,  and  the 
brown  monotony  of  the  withered  vegetation,  was 
strangely  contrasted  with  the  vapory  gold  of  the  at- 
mosphere, where  it  floated  over  the  fens  of  the  Jordan 
in  a  languid  dream  of  midsummer  and  midnoon,  with 
the  intense  blue  of  the  cloudless  sky,  and  the  rosy  sur- 
faces of  the  Wahsatch  behind  us,  the  Oquirrh  in  front. 
Both  ranges  looked  close  by ;  the  broken  lights  and 
shades  seemed  laid  in  as  distinctly  as  by  some  delicate 
pencil,  and  the  terraces  or  "benches"  of  the  slope 
which  faced  us  on  the  west,  were  as  clean-cut  as  the 
steps  of  a  temple.  Nothing  on  the  palette  of  Nature 
is  lovelier,  more  incapable  of  rendition  by  mere 
words,  than  the  rose-pink  hue  of  the  mountains  in 
that  rainless  climate,  unmodified  by  any  such  filtering 
of  the  reflected  light  through  lenses  of  forest  verdure 
as  tones  down  and  cools  to  a  neutral  tint  the  color  of 
all  our  Eastern  mountains,  even  though  their  local 
tint  be  the  reddest  sandstone.  The  Oquirrh  has  hues 
which  in  full  daylight  are  as  positive  ruby,  coral,  gar- 
net, and  carnelian, — at  sunset  and  in  twilight  as  posi- 
tive amethyst,  jacinth,  topaz,  and  opal, —  as  the  stones 
which  go  by  those  names  themselves.  No  amount  of 
positive  color  which  an  artist  may  put  into  his  brush 
can  ever  do  justice  to  the  reality  of  the  Kocky  Moun- 
tains, the  Oquirrh,  the  Humboldt,  in  noon  or  at  sun- 
down. 

The  road  was  in  good  condition,  and  we  reached 
the  base  of  the  Oquirrh  in  about  three  hours.  Pass- 
ing around  a  low  spur  of  the  mountains  jutting  north- 


382       THE  HEART  OF  THE  CONTINENT. 

erly,  we  descended  among  bold  limestone  crags  and 
masses  of  debris,  scantily  patched  with  artemisia, 
squab  cactus,  and  the  thistly  Cirsium,  to  the  level  of 
the  great  basin.  A  mile  or  two  further,  and  we  got 
our  first  blue  glimpse  of  the  lake.  A  fifteen  minutes' 
ride,  and  Black  Rock  rose  grim  and  ugly,  like  the 
foundation  of  some  ruined  round  tower,  across  the 
end  of  our  road,  seeming  to  shut  it  in.  The  beetling 
precipices  of  limestone,  rent  with  innumerable  clefts 
and  fissures,  came  down  close  upon  our  left  hand,  and 
we  stopped  just  where  they  crowded  us  to  the  brink 
of  the  sea. 

We  had  expected  a  grim  and  desolate  landscape ; 
a  sullen  waste  of  brine,  stagnating  along  low  reedy 
shores,  black  as  Acheron,  gloomy  as  the  sepulchre 
of  Sodom.  Never  had  Nature  a  greater  surprise  for 
us.  The  view  was  one  of  the  most  charming  which 
could  be  imagined.  Its  elements  of  sublimity  were 
many,  but  beauty  was  its  most  impressive  character- 
istic, and  the  word  "lovely"  occurred  to  us  instantly 
as  its  fittest  description. 

On  our  left  and  western  side,  as  we  faced  the  sea, 
the  lateral  ranges  of  the  Oquirrh  decreased  in  height 
until  they  melted  into  vapory  streaks  of  pale  turquoise 
on  the  far  horizon,  their  northward  terminations 
forming  bold  headlands,  or  long,  low  promontories, 
with  dreamy  bays  setting  back  into  the  indentations 
of  the  coast  between  them.  The  coast  line  in  that 
direction  had  a  southwesterly  trend  for  about  thirty 
miles  from  Black  Rock,  at  which  distance  occurs  the 
farthest  point  to  which  the  lake  extends  southerly. 
All  the  headlands  within  sight — some  of  them  ap- 
parently possessing  an  elevation  of  fifteen  hundred 
or  two  thousand  feet — exhibited  that  gorgeous  va- 


THE  DEAD  SEA.  383 

riety  and  brilliancy  of  tints  which  we  remarked  on 
the  faces  of  the  Wahsatch  and  Oquirrh ;  the  lime- 
stone rock,  in  many  places  crystalline,  shining  in  the 
sun  like  chased  silver,  or  iron  at  a  white  heat ;  the 
conglomerates,  the  metamorphic  and  the  volcanic 
strata,  here  and  there  striated  with  bands  of  the  same 
silvery  lustre,  but  mainly  characterized  by  different 
shades  of  red,  graded  from  the  nearest  positive  car- 
mine to  the  most  distant  flushed  with  a  faint  hint  of 
pink  almost  evanescent,  exquisitely  delicate  and  ten- 
der, like  the  merest  glaze  of  rose-madder  over  a 
ground  of  cream.  To  the  northeast  the  shore  was 
comparatively  low  and  uninteresting,  possessing  the 
characteristics  of  that  plain  whose  edge  it  was,  the 
level  on  which  Salt  Lake  City  lies,  and  on  which  we 
had  spent  the  three  hours  between  the  city  and  the 
Oquirrh.  From  our  feet  to  the  northwestern  horizon 
stretched  the  sea  like  a  pavement  of  pure  sapphire, 
flecked  here  and  there  with  drifting  whirls  of  marble 
dust.  It  may  have  been  imagination,  but  I  could  not 
help  thinking  that  the  excessive  specific  gravity  of 
the  lake-brine,  even  had  we  never  heard  of  it,  must 
have  revealed  itself  in  the  heavy  swing  of  the  waves 
like  that  of  quicksilver  rather  than  'of  water,  and  the 
scanty,  powdery,  character  of  the  spray,  like  the  fine 
dry  grains  of  an  unusually  cold  snow-storm.  Directly 
before  us,  to  the  northward,  the  southern  end  of 
Church  (or  Antelope)  Island  rose  from  the  lake  — 
shaped  like  a  lofty  pair  of  pyramids,  whose  surface 
below  the  sky-line  was  broken  into  many  smaller 
peaks  of  the  same  configuration,  projecting  from  the 
main  pyramids  like  the  forms  of  a  secondary  crystal- 
lization. Those  of  our  party  who  enjoyed  reminis- 
cences of  the  Mediterranean  found  much  in  Church 


384  THE  HEART  OF  THE  CONTINENT. 

Island  to  remind  them  of  Capri.  Singularly  enough, 
the  Mormons  report  a  cave  in  a  bold  precipice  on  the 
former's  coast-line  which  may  carry  the  distant  rela- 
tionship a  step  nearer  by  doing  duty  for  a  Blue 
Grotto.  Certainly  the  most  ravishing  May-noon  that 
ever  shone  on  the  Italian  prototype  never  warmed  its 
cliffs  into  a  lovelier  dream  of  color.  At  the  distance 
of  six  miles  from  our  stand-point,  and  seen  through 
the  screen  of  mellowing  vapors  which  insensibly 
tinged  the  atmosphere  above  the  lake,  the  whole  vast 
mass  of  tufa,  hornblende-rock,  conglomerate,  mica- 
schist,  talcose  and  other  metamorphic  slates,  gneiss, 
and  limestone,  seemed  soft  as  a  sunset  cloud  in  tone 
of  both  of  feeling  and  color,  or  might  have  been  taken 
for  a  luxurious  bank  of  roses  set  adrift  to  sway  lazily 
on  the  long  swells  of  some  hasheesh-eater's  Lotos  Bay. 
Directly  behind  us,  to  the  height  of  ten  or  twelve  hun- 
dred feet,  rose  several  successive  "benches"  or  ter- 
raced planes  of  elevation  —  conglomerate  near  the 
base,  but  limestone  a  little  higher,  the  sides  nearly  or 
quite  perpendicular,  in  many  places  even  overhang- 
ing, and  threatening  at  no  distant  day  to  follow  the 
example  and  share  the  fate  of  the  great  masses  of 
debris  at  their  fe^et,  varying  in  the  comminution  of 
their  fragments  from  whole  detached  blocks  as  large 
as  a  moderately  sized  house  to  the  finest  dust,  some- 
times the  accumulation  of  so  long  and  undisturbed  a 
period  as  entirely  to  obliterate  the  line  of  demarca- 
tion between  the  successive  benches.  Here  and  there, 
in  the  finer  detritus,  a  stinted  maple,  a  quaking  as- 
pen, or  a  dwarf  willow,  belonging  to  some  one  of  the 
many  species  found  in  this  region,  had  taken  root ; 
but  with  the  exception  of  secluded  spots  sheltered 
from  the  direct  force  of  sun  and  wind,  the  crags  were 


THE  DEAD    SEA.  385 

bare  of  any  vegetation  more  ambitious  tban  the  arte- 
misiacese  and  certain  little  lanigerous  plants.  Far  up 
the  face  of  one  precipice  we  were  pointed  out  the 
entrance  to  a  remarkable  cave.  Accompanied  by  a 
couple  of  my  friends,  I  had  the  recklessness  to  clam- 
ber up  the  slippery  tablets  and  tottlish  boulders  which 
lay  strewn  upon  the  glacis  of  detritus  intervening 
between  us  and  the  lofty  hole,  but  lost  all  confidence 
in  caverns  when  I  discovered  this  particular  one  to  be 
merely  a  shallow  recess  in  the  Ihhestone,  nowhere 
reentrant  to  a  distance  of  over  forty  feet,  of  the  gen- 
eral proportions  of  a  tin  oven,  and  transacting  an  im- 
mense business  of  mystery  (or  what  they  call,  as  far 
west  as  this, "  Shenandigan  "  and  "  Scullduggery  ")  with 
those  who  gape  at  it  from  below,  on  the  capital  of  a 
dark,  overgrown  portal,  as  big  as  the  cave  itself.  I 
could  extemporize  as  good  a  cave  anywhere  in  the 
country  by  knocking  one  side  out  of  a  medium-sized 
cow-stable.  On  reaching  terra  firma  (a  distinction 
unusually  but  properly  applied,  as  any  one  who  has 
ever  broken  his  shins  on  one  of  those  stones  which 
gather  no  moss  and  show  no  remorse  will  testify)  we 
had  the  further  satisfaction  of  learning  that  we  had 
not  been  to  the  right  cave  at  all.  The  discoverer  of 
the  right  cave,  an  orphan  cowherd  named  Smith,  who 
"ran"  the  Black  Rock  Ranch,  in  the  absence  of  pro- 
prietors still  keeping  Fourth  of  July  in  that  vortex 
of  brilliant  revelry,  "  the  city,"  told  us  that  he  had^ 
explored  it  for  about  forty  rods,  and  seemed  to  like  it 
as  far  as  he  had  gone,  though  his  descriptive  powers 
rather  failed  him  when  he  was  called  on  for  particu- 
lars. The  cave  had  no  name,  he  said  ;  so,  after  hes- 
itating in  view  of  a  question  whether  it  bettered  the 
matter,  we  advised  him  to  give  it  his  own ;  but,  with 

25 


386       THE  HEART  OF  THE  CONTINENT. 

the  modesty  of  all  great  discoverers,  he  replied  that 
this  had  never  struck  him.  One  or  two  of  the  party, 
who  had  not  already  broken  their  shins  for  the  fraud- 
ulent cavern,  set  out  under  his  guidance  to  visit 
Smith's  Cave,  but  came  back  unsatisfied,  having  omit- 
ted to  take  candles.  The  locality  is  a  very  likely  one 
for  such  hsus  naturae,  or  would  be,  were  there  more 
running  water  in  the  neighborhood  to  produce  the 
phenomena  of  erosion.  The  rock  in  which  Smith 
found  his  cave  is  a  limestone,  similar  to  that  capping 
the  conglomerate  and  metamorphic  slates  everywhere 
on  the  lofty  benches  about  the  lake  basin ;  a  favorite 
stratum  for  Nature's  operations  in  the  line  of  subter- 
ranean architecture,  and,  in  the  abundance  of  sulphur 
associated  with  it  under  various  forms,  showing  a 
probability  of  sufficient  gypsum  for  the  extensive 
manufacture  of  stalactites.  The  limestone  stratum  is 
distinctly  carboniferous,  and  affords  numerous  indica- 
tions of  the  former  existence  of  superimposed  coal- 
beds,  now  destroyed  by  long  exposure  to  the  weather, 
or  those  volcanic  agencies  which  have  contributed 
heat  to  the  metamorphose  of  the  talcs,  schists,  gneiss, 
and  other  rocks  in  the  vicinity  still  preserving  their 
planes  of  stratification.  In  several  portions  of  Utah 
— the  valleys  of  Bear  and  Weber  Kivers,  of  Silver  and 
Sulphur  Creeks  —  coal  has  been  found ;  also  on  the 
Green  (or  Main  Fork  of  the  Colorado)  River,  and  in 
the  Little  Salt  Lake  Valley.  The  latter  coals  are  be- 
lieved to  be  altogether  bituminous ;  but  none  of  them 
seem  to  belong,  like  those  of  the  Platte  and  head-wa- 
ters of  the  Arkansas,  to  the  tertiary  and  cretaceous. 
I  have  mentioned  in  its  place  the  coal  which  I  exam- 
ined on  the  Platte,  not  far  from  Denver,  as  belonging 
to  a  very  recent  period ;  retaining  perfectly  distinct 


THE  DEAD   SEA.  387 

impressions  of  the  cotton-wood,  ash,  willow,  and  pop- 
lar leaves,  to  whose  deposit  under  heat  and  moisture 
its  existence  seems  due,  and  of  such  imperfect  com- 
pactness that  it  was  impossible  to  coke  it,  its  residuum 
after  combustion  being  only  a  light  ash,  like  that  of 
burnt  straw.  Tertiary  and  cretaceous  coal  may  very 
likely  be  found  in  the  lowlands  of  the  Mormon  Terri- 
tory, but  the  limestone  benches  of  the  Great  Basin 
and  its  affluents  possess  a. true  carboniferous  charac- 
ter, as  marked  as  any  strata  in  Pennsylvania.  I  felt 
amply  repaid  for  my  barked  shins  and  misplaced  con- 
fidence when,  on  my  way  down  from  the  bogus  cave, 
I  came  upon  a  fragment  of  limestone  whose  face  was 
stamped  all  over  with  the  delicate  daisy-like  cells  of 
the  Lithostrotion.  Near  the  same  place  I  found  another 
piece  of  limestone  marked,  in  cross  sections,  with  beau- 
tifully preserved  stems  of  some  crinoid.  Stansbury's 
Island  (with  the  exception  of  Church  Island,  the  lar- 
gest in  the  lake,  lying  southwest  of  it  and  out  of 
sight  as  we  look  from  Black  Rock)  possesses  a  sum- 
mit of  the  same  limestone  as  this  by  the  lake-shore, 
and  in  it  the  expedition  of  the  captain  who  gave 
his  name  to  the  island  found  the  same  corals  that  I 
found  here — a  fact  which  seems  to  corroborate  the 
view  that  the  Oquirrh  ranges  are  continued  through 
the  lake.  The  variety  of  conditions  under  which, 
within  a  small  area,  I  found  the  limestone  existing 
on  the  cliffs  above  Black  Eock,  was  very  curious  and 
interesting.  I  found  an  isolated  piece  of  cretaceous 
lime-rock  so  soft  as  to  be  scratched  by  the  finger-nail ; 
close  by  it  a  fossiliferous  fragment ;  and  not  far  away 
a  block  so  much  altered  by  heat  as  to  approximate 
the  constitution  of  marble,  while  everywhere  were 
to  be  seen  masses  of  fine-grained  blue  limestone,  un- 


388       THE  HEART  OF  THE  CONTINENT. 

altered,  but  traversed  in  all  directions  by  infiltrated 
veins  of  beautifully  lustrous  and  crystalline  calospar, 
as  finely  pearly  as  aragonite,  crossed  and  reticulated 
in  such  strange  patterns  that  a  polished  slab  of  it 
would  make  as  rich  a  mantel  or  a  table  as  Carrara 
marble. 

Desiring  to  repeat  mere  arbitrary  geographical 
names  and  measures  as  little  as  possible,  I  will  dis- 
miss that  portion  of  my  Salt  Lake  material  in  a  few 
sentences,  quoting  as  far  as  possible  from  the  report 
of  Captain  Stansbury.  The  circumference  of  Salt 
Lake  is  291  miles.  Its  greatest  length  in  a  nearly 
north-northwest  direction  from  Black  Rock  to  the 
shore  of  Spring  Bay  is  75  miles.  Its  maximum  width, 
measured  along  the  forty-first  parallel,  is  35  miles.  It 
contains  six  islands,  the  sum  of  whose  circumference 
amounts  to  96  miles.  Church  Island,  the  largest,  re- 
ceived its  name  from  the  fact  that  all  the  stock  belong- 
ing to  the  Church,  especially  the  beeves  and  milch  cat- 
tle, are  sent  there  through  the  temperate  season  of  the 
year  to  graze  in  charge  of  a  herder.  Whence  it  re- 
ceived its  alternate,  perhaps  its  original  designation 
of  Antelope  Island  I  cannot  tell,  as  I  have  never 
heard  of  any  antelope  inhabiting  it  within  the  mem- 
ory of  Mormons  or  aborigines.  It  ranges  nearly 
north  and  south;  has  a  maximum  length  of  about 
sixteen  miles,  a  maximum  breadth  of  five,  and  rises 
in  its  loftiest  peak  to  a  height  of  three  thousand  feet 
above  the  lake,  or  more  than  seven  thousand  above 
the  sea  level.  Far  to  the  eastward  of  Black  Rock, 
a  shoal  of  compact  sand  connects  the  island  with  the 
main-land.  In  the  summer  this  strip  is  left  bare  by 
the  recession  of  the  lake,  and  it  is  seldom  flooded  to 
a  greater  depth  than  three  or  four  feet.  Its  surface 


THE  DEAD   SEA.  389 

is  hard  enough  for  the  passage  of  every  description 
of  animal  or  vehicle,  and  it  thus  affords  a  convenient 
bridge  or  ford  for  the  transit  of  the  Church  herds 
which  pasture  on  the  island.  The  island  vegetation, 
like  that  of  the  main-land,  is  short  and  withered  in 
appearance,  but  succulent  and  wholesome,  as  the 
condition  of  the  ecclesiastical  cattle  testify. 

About  ten  miles  to  the  northward  of  Church  Island 
lies  Fremont  Island,  about  fourteen  miles  in  circum- 
ference and  rising  to  the  height  of  a  thousand  feet 
from  the  lake,  or  more  than  five  thousand  feet  above 
the  sea  level.  Its  shape  was  quaintly  but  not  inaccu- 
rately expressed  by  an  old  hunter  who  told  me  that 
it  was  like  a  kidney  potato  with  a  good  big  bite  taken 
out  of  one  side.  The  bitten  side  lies  to  the  south- 
west, and  the  whole  circumference  of  the  island  is 
from  fourteen  to  sixteen  miles,  according  to  whether 
one  counts  the  undulations  of  the  coast-line  or  not. 
Neither  trees  nor  fresh  water  exist  there ;  but  grass, 
the  wild  onion,  a  palatable  bulb  about  the  size  of  a 
plover's  egg,  called  the  sego  ( Calochortus  Luteus),  and 
the  wild  parsnip  abound  on  it.  In  the  spring  this 
vegetation  is  so  luxuriant  as  to  cover  the  steep  sides 
of  the  island  with  a  verdure  delightfully  contrasting 
with  the  barren  crags  and  burnt-looking  wastes  seen 
elsewhere  about  the  lake.  Stansbury  gave  it  its 
present  name  in  honor  of  its  first  explorer,  who  had 
named  it  Disappointment  Island,  from  the  fact  that 
he  had  expected,  from  the  vague  report  of  the  old 
voyageurs,  a  perfect  tropical  paradise  of  thick  forest, 
luxuriant  shrubbery,  and  wild  game,  but  discovered 
only  the  small  vegetation  we  have  mentioned,  and 
no  animal  life  at  all,  except  the  colonies  of  wild  fowl 
which  frequent  the  sheltered  nooks  along  the  craggy 


390  THE  HEAET  OP  THE  CONTINENT. 

coast-line  of  every  island  in  the  lake.  I  only  follow 
the  example  of  every  traveller  who  has  preceded  me 
in  preserving  the  tradition  that  here  also,  on  the  very 
summit,  Fremont  lost  the  cover  to  the  object-glass  of 
his  telescope,  and  that  Stansbury  sought  for  it  in 
vain ;  an  additional  reason  for  Fremont's  designation, 
since  in  this  vapory  region  the  cover  of  a  telescope 
is  not  its  least  valuable  part.  The  island  rises  steeply 
from  the  water,  in  some  places-  with  an  ascent  of 
more  than  forty-five  degrees,  with  outlying  reefs 
here  and  there  of  mica-schist  and  green  hornblende. 
The  composition  of  its  rocky  mass  is  variable,  com- 
prising tufa  derived  from  the  feldspathic  detritus  of 
the  older  strata,  conglomerate  formed  of  water-worn 
quartzose  and  granitic  fragments  imbedded  in  a  sedi- 
mentary matrix,  and  many  metamorphic  forms  in 
which  the  clay  schists  predominate,  these  last  often 
containing  an  abundance  of  iron  pyrites,  entire  or  in 
minute  decomposition.  This  island  does  not  rise  high 
enough  to  reach  the  level  at  which  the  sub-carbonif- 
erous limestone  would  be  likely  to  occur  in  a  band 
continuous  with  that  which  caps  Church  Island  and 
the  main-land  ranges  to  the  south,  but  the  lower  and 
metamorphic  strata  which  exist  on  it  are  sufficiently 
correspondent  and  cognate  with  those  of  the  range 
to  prove  it  a  continuation  of  the  Oquirrh.  Near  the 
summit  is  a  very  curious  mass  of  schistose  rock,  per- 
forated by  three  immense  windows,  two  of  which  are 
separated  by  a  ragged  mullion,  and  through  them  a 
splendid  view  of  the  lake  may  be  obtained.  From 
the  highest  table-land  projects  a  castellated  fragment 
which  has  led  the  Mormons  to  give  the  island  a  third 
name,  so  that  one  now  has  his  choice  between  "  Cas- 
tle," «  Fremont,"  and  "  Disappointment "  Island.  The 


THE   DEAD  SEA.  391 

suggestion  of  Stansbury,  that  good  water  might  be 
obtained  here  by  boring,  has  not  thus  far  been  acted 
on.  Thus,  although  the  vegetation  of  the  island  is 
more  luxuriant  and  varied  than  that  of  Antelope,  it 
still  remains  tenantless,  and,  so  far  as  I  know,  unvis- 
ited.  The  absence  of  such  springs  upon  it  as  water 
Antelope,  is  easily  accounted  for  by  its  less  height, 
and  its  consequent  deficiency  in  capacity  and  area 
for  congelation,  all  the  springs  of  the  former  island 
coming  from  beds  which  have  received  the  percola- 
tions of  higher  levels,  in  winter  covered  with  vast 
masses  of  snow  and  ice.  Boring  would  undoubtedly 
reach  water,  but  of  what  kind  may  be  questioned ; 
the  strata  through  which  it  would  be  necessary  to 
pass  in  order  to  strike  the  impervious  stratum  dip- 
ping under  the  bed  of  the  lake  from  the  Oquirrh, 
and  forming  the  natural  water-bed  and  conduit  from 
the  latter's  summits,  being  largely  saliferous  them- 
selves, and  so  friable  as  possibly  to  admit  of  transu- 
dations  from  the  surrounding  brine.  At  a  sufficient 
distance  from  the  lake  shore  to  obviate  the  latter 
difficulty,  the  increased  height  of  the  island  would 
largely  add  to  the  labor  and  expense  of  boring;  but 
it  is  certainly  worth  while  to  make  the  experiment, 
as  the  present  abundance  of  small  vegetation,  and  the 
richness  of  the  rapidly  decomposing  rock  in  all  the 
solid  elements  of  fertility,  prove  that  irrigation  would 
make  the  island  one  of  the  finest  cattle  ranges  be- 
tween the  Mississippi  and  the  west  slope  of  the  Sierra 
Nevada.  The  "  benches/'  chronicling  successive  pe- 
riods of  the  lake's  recession,  are  very  prominent 
around  the  coast  of  this  island  everywhere. 

About  fifteen   miles  from   Fremont's  Island  and, 
nearly  the  same  distance  from  Black  Kock,  across 


392       THE  HEART  OF  THE  CONTINENT. 

that  bay  lying  on  our  westward  hand,  whose  deepest 
indentation  is  the  furthest  southerly  point  of  the 
lake's  extent,  lies  a  lune-shaped  mass  called  Stans- 
bury  Island,  although  its  insular  character  is  part  of 
the  year  entirely  obliterated  by  the  emergence  of  a 
sand-flat  which  connects  it  with  the  main-land  not 
merely  at  one  point,  like  the  isthmus  between  Church 
Island  and  the  lake  shore,  but  along  its  entire  breadth. 
It  is  the  second  of  the  islands  in  size,  having  a  length 
of  twelve  miles,  a  circumference  of  thirty,  and  a  peak 
near  its  centre,  about  three  thousand  feet  above  the 
level  of  the  lake.  As  Antelope  is  the  continuation 
of  the  Oquirrh,  so  Stanbury's  Island  seems  to  be  the 
reappearance  of  a  range  running  parallel  to  the 
Oquirrh,  and  separated  from  it  by  the  Tuilla  Valley 
about  as  far  as  that  is  separated  from  the  Wahsatch. 
This  valley  is  a  basin  corresponding  to  that  in  which 
Salt  Lake  City  lies,  though  it  differs  from  the  latter 
in  cradling  no  stream  like  the  Jordan.  As  the 
Oquirrh  dips  at  Black  Rock  to  rise  again  in  Antelope 
and  Fremont  Islands,  so  does  this  westward  and  par- 
allel chain  sink  at  a  point  exactly  due  west  of  the 
dip  of  the  Oquirrh  to  reappear  in  Stansbury  and  Car- 
rington  Islands.  Stansbury  Island  shows  that  it  is 
the  outlier  and  continuation  of  a  distinct  range  from 
those  of  the  Oquirrh  system,  by  the  difference  in  its 
geological  formations.  Its  capping  stratum  is  a  black 
and  gray  limestone,  like  that  of  the  Oquirrh,  contain- 
ing multitudes  of  fossils  belonging  to  the  carboniferous 
period,  both  coralline  and  crinoidal ;  but  immediately 
beneath  this  the  jumbled  strata  of  conglomerate  and 
metamorphic  rocks  found  on  Antelope  and  Fremont 
are  replaced  by  deposits  of  a  fine  white  sandstone, 
having  in  places  an  uninterrupted  thickness  of  two 


THE  DEAD   SEA.  393 

hundred  feet,  even  along  the  edges  where  they  crop 
out.  On  the  eastern  shore  springs  of  water  are  abun- 
dant, and  vegetation  is  luxuriant.  Above  the  springs, 
the  fine  silicious  rock  rises  in  magnificent  cliffs,  whose 
shining  white  wall  and  castellated  cornice,  contrasted 
with  the  rich  verdure  around  the  clear,  fresh  stream- 
lets at  their  base,  in  sunlight  and  full-moonlight  pre- 
sent a  picture  of  inconceivable  beauty.  Still  higher 
the  island  rises  toward  the  central  dome  in  noble 
masses  of  barren  rock,  piled  step  on  step  in  that  sin- 
gular imitation  of  basalt  which  we  sometimes  find  in 
limestone,  amounting  almost  to  a  deception  concern- 
ing its  lithological  character ;  huge  foursquare  pil- 
lars and  cleanly  beveled  battlements,  vast  towers 
and  frowning  fortresses,  with  salient  and  reentrant 
angles  succeeding  each  other,  as  if  by  the  plan  of 
some  Titanic  military  engineer ;  great  cuh-de-sac  and 
deep  recesses  cut  into  the  precipitous  face  of  the 
coast  wall ;  all  these  making  the  grandest  effects  of 
chiaroscuro  as  the  light  plays  with  their  vast  bulks 
and  hollows,  until  the  weather-rounded  summit  is 
reached  at  a  height  as  great  as  the  monarch  of  the 
Catskills,  and  a  view  breaks  on  the  adventurous 
climber,  comparing  for  rugged  sublimity  with  any 
but  the  grandest  of  the  two  Sierras.  The  rich  vege- 
tation and  abundant  water  on  the  lower  levels  of 
Stansbury  Island  make  it  the  finest  cattle  range  in 
the  neighborhood  of  Salt  Lake ;  and  it  would  doubt- 
less receive  the  preference  of  the  Saints  over  Ante- 
lope as  a  pasturage  for  the  sacred  herds,  were  it  not 
at  so  great  a  distance  from  the  city.  Time  out  of 
mind  it  has  been  frequented  by  the  Indians ;  its  easy 
means  of  transit  from  the  main-land  make  it  a  fa- 
vorite retreat  and  browsing-place  for  antelope  and 


394       THE  HEART  OF  THE  CONTINENT. 

other  wild  animals ;  while  the  settlers  of  the  Tuilla 
Valley  herd  their  cattle  there  habitually. 

Carrington  Island,  named  after  Captain  Stansbury's 
assistant  in  the  survey,  is  a  mass  shaped  somewhat 
like  a  thick  and  clumsy  fish-hook,  with  its  heel 
placed  southerly  and  about  four  miles  from  the 
northern  promontory  of  Stansbury  Island,  about  eight 
miles  long  from  heel  to  point,  six  miles  from  heel  to 
top  of  shank,  and  five  miles  in  width,  measuring  from 
outside  to  outside  across  the  deep  bay  on  the  north 
which  separates  the  two  members.  It  is  separated 
from  the  eastern  shore  of  the  lake  about  as  far  as  it 
is  from  Stansbury,  by  a  shoal  of  hard,  tufaceous  rock 
which  never  becomes  entirely  uncovered ;  indeed, 
reefs  of  tufa  and  sand-flats  under  water  surround  it 
on  almost  every  side,  covering  an  area  larger  than 
the  island  itself.  It  is  without  springs,  but  abounds 
in  plants,  many  of  them  interesting  both  from  their 
novelty  and  for  their  intrinsic  beauty.  The  sego, 
before  referred  to,  is  very  plenty;  and  Stansbury, 
who  saw  it  on  the  17th  of  June,  when  it  was  in  full 
blossom,  describes  it  as  bearing  lovely,  lily-like  flow- 
ers, which  enlivened  all  the  gentle  slopes  of  the  island. 
Its  inner  sepals  are  a  delicate  white,  soft  and  creamy 
like  the  calla's,  with  a  golden-yellow  claw.  "  A  large 
number  of  other  plants  were  collected  here,  among 
which  Cleome  Lutea,  Sidalcia  Neo-Mexicana,  Malvastrum 
Coccineum,  Stephanomeria  minor,  a  new  species  of  Mafaco- 
thrix,  and  Graia  Spinosa  were  the  most  prominent." 
Limestone  of  numerous  varieties  belonging  to  the 
carboniferous  seems  the  predominant  formation  on 
this  island,  suggesting  the  theory  that  the  summit  of 
the  range  has  here  dipped  to  the  lake  level;  as  the 
island,  though  possessing  an  acuminated  form  like 


THE  DEAD  SEA.  395 

the  rest,  does  not  rise  to  any  great  height  above  the 
water. 

Hat  Island  is  a  bare  rock,  rising  from  the  lake  five 
miles  north  of  Carrington,  and  so  called  from  its  fan- 
cied resemblance  to  an  old  beaver.  About  thirty 
miles  to  the  north-northwest  of  this  is  Gunnison's  Isl- 
and, named  after  one  of  the  officers  in  Stansbury's  ex- 
pedition. It  really  consists  of  two  islands,  the  smaller 
of  the  two,  a  mere  outlying  knob  of  rock,  rising 
about  a  hundred  yards  to  the  northward  of  the 
larger,  and  once,  as  Stansbury  thinks,  forming  a  part 
of  it.  The  main  island  consists  of  an  irregular  ridge 
of  compact  limestone,  like  the  cap  of  the  range,  and 
the  great  mass  of  Carrington  Island.  Its  indented 
coast  is  peopled  with  countless  hosts  of  cormorants, 
herons,  gulls,  and  pelicans.  Its  northward  face  rises 
almost  perpendicularly  from  the  water's  edge  to  the 
height  of  six  hundred  feet ;  a  wall  of  limestone  show- 
ing strata  of  both  the  black  and  gray  varieties.  Stans- 
bury reports  that  the  space  between  this  precipice 
and  the  outlying  islet  is  occupied  by  a  beautiful  and 
romantic  little  bay,  with  deep-blue  waters  so  crystal- 
clear  that  the  bar  connecting  the  islands  is  distinctly 
visible  beneath  the  water.  Ten  miles  further  to  the 
north-northwest,  and  about  two  miles  from  the  west 
shore  of  the  lake,  lies  a  small  mass  of  emergent  con- 
glomerate, about  seventy  feet  high  at  its  loftiest  point, 
and  continued  under  water  in  a  shoal  about  knee-deep, 
for  a  mile  or  more  northerly.  From  the  shape  of  its 
ridge,  it  has  received  the  name  of  Dolphin  Island.  Be- 
side these,  there  are  in  the  lake  several  small  banks 
and  rocks  just  large  enough  to  moor  a  boat  to,  but  in- 
significant and  bare  of  vegetation.  So  far  as  I  know, 
the  only  ones  which  have  received  any  name,  are 
Egg  and  Mud  Island. 


396       THE  HEART  OF  THE  CONTINENT. 

Having  discharged  my  conscience  of  all  duties  due 
the  geography  and  hydrography  of  the  lake,  I  return 
to  my  party,  who  have  by  this  time  finished  their 
cave-hunting  excursions,  unpacked  from  the  vehicles 
the  hampers  of  eatables,  and  set  the  discoverer  Smith 
at  work  preparing  for  our  dinner.  Though  the  pro- 
prietors of  Black  Rock  Ranch  are  still  Fourth-of-July- 
ing  it  at  "  the  city,"  the  cows  are  at  home,  carrying 
on  their  important  part  of  the  business  with  a  week- 
day steady-mindedness  as  prosaic  as  if  nobody  ever 
had  a  holiday  or  flung  a  torpedo  the  whole  year 
round.  Smith,  the  discoverer,  has  acquired  something 
of  their  business  regularity  by  association ;  and  the 
dairy  of  Black  Rock  Ranch  groans  through  all  its 
clean-scrubbed  shelves  and  bright-scoured  pans,  with 
the  rich  yellow  produce  of  his  herd.  There  are  plenty 
of  active  partners  in  the  ranch,  too,  to  be  found 
among  the  denizens  of  its  poultry-yard ;  so  that  we 
are  going  to  have  the  royalest  of  lunches,  on  fresh 
country  cream,  butter,  and  eggs,  beside  a  big  kettle- 
ful  of  that  savory  prepared  coffee,  whose  solid  basis, 
to  the  extent  of  two  tin  boxes  full,  we  had  brought 
with  us  from  our  own  travelling  stores,  and  whose 
invaluable  assistance  in  getting  up  hasty  camp  break- 
fasts we  have  had  occasion  so  often  to  acknowledge  in 
crossing  the  Plains  and  the  mountains,  and  bivouack- 
ing on  the  hunting  grounds  of  our  Western  country. 
Besides  these  luxuries  were  a  quantity  of  cold  broiled 
chicken,  some  loaves  of  sweet  home-made  bread  con- 
structed from  Utah  wheat,  a  boiled  ham,  half  a  dozen 
boxes  of  sardines,  a  jar  of  Crosse  &  Blackwell's 
chow-chow,  another  of  Shaker  apple-butter,  and  still 
another  of  hermetically  sealed  tomatoes,  —  some  of 
these  articles  drawn  from  our  own  commissariat,  and 


THE   DEAD   SEA.  397 

a  part  packed  into  our  hamper  by  one  of  the  Mes- 
dames  Townsend.  While  the  discoverer  was  busy 
setting  the  tables  and  building  a  roaring  fire  in  the 
kitchen  to  prepare  our  grub,  we  found  a  spare  quar- 
ter of  an  hour  on  our  hands,  which  it  was  decided,  by 
a  unanimous  vote,  could  be  no  better  spent  than  in 
making  the  better  acquaintance  of  Salt  Lake  by  a 
plunge  into  its  bosom. 

We  undressed  in  the  kitchen  of  the  ranch,  and  had 
only  about  half  a  dozen  rods  to  walk  to  the  water's 
edge.  The  beach  was  very  disagreeable,  consisting 
of  flinty  rock  fragments,  sharp  as  a  razor,  from  one 
to  eighteen  inches  long,  and  all  seeming  to  lie  edge 
and  point  upward.  At  every  step  some  cut  or 
bruised  foot  came  up  with  a  jerk  and  a  yell  from  its 
indignant  owner,  and  self-gratulations  were  profuse 
when  we  reached  the  water.  But  our  rejoicing  was 
short-lived.  The  exchange  was,  if  possible,  of  bad 
for  worse.  The  water  deepened  very  gradually ;  and 
after  wetting  our  feet,  we  had  to  walk  further  to 
reach  a  swimming  depth  than  we  had  previously 
come  from  the  kitchen.  The  mangling  chunks  of 
stone  were  no  longer  visible,  but  they  were  still 
there,  and  tangible  as  ever.  Worse  yet,  it  was  not 
sand  which  covered  them  out  of  sight,  but  a  layer  of 
black  mud  six  inches  thick,  through  which-  the  foot 
sank  to  its  torture  bed  of  spikes  below,  as  through 
the  fine  silt  of  a  sewer,  or  a  compost -heap.  No 
words  can  do  justice  to  the  filthiness  of  this  Stygian 
mire.  Every  sense  to  which  it  appealed,  recoiled  in 
loathing.  It  felt  like  a  clammy  paste  of  rottenness, 
much  colder  than  the  water  above,  and  sent  a  chilly 
shudder  of  horror  crawling  up  one's  spinal  marrow, 
as  one  foot  came  up  with  a  disgusting  thlupp,  and  the 


398       THE  HEART  OF  THE  CONTINENT. 

other  sunk  deeper  with  the  vile  stuff  oozing  up  be- 
tween its  toes ;  it  dyed  the  clear  blue  brine,  wherever 
it  was  disturbed,  a  black  like  foul  ink  diffusing  itself 
in  clouds  for  two  yards  round;  and  its  smell, — what 
word-perfumer  can  do  justice  to  that  ?  It  was  rotten- 
ness itself.  The  worst  odor  of  putrefaction  that  ever 
sickened  me  elsewhere,  was  night-blooming  cereus 
compared  with  it ;  it  would  have  turned  the  stom- 
ach of  a  turkey-buzzard  or  a  ghoul.  I  had  the  hardi- 
hood to  examine  it,  and  found  that  it  consisted  of 
the  decomposed  larvae  of  some  insect  like  the  mos- 
quito. But  where  had  the  tenants  of  these  cast-off 
dwellings  gone  ?  We  were  never  troubled  with  mos- 
quitos  or  gnats  at  Salt  Lake,  either  in  the  city  or 
any  other  portion  of  the  region ;  yet  the  larvae  pres- 
ent along  a  rod  of  that  shore  represented  a  host  of 
those  midnight  assassins  large  enough  to  have  driven 
all  Utah  Territory  stark  mad,  and  sucked  every  Saint 
in  it  dry  as  parchment,  though  its  population  were  as 
densely  packed  as  that  of  China.  At  that  time  I  had 
read  nothing  written  by  other  explorers,  and  having 
only  heard  the  commonly  received  report  that  Salt 
Lake,  like  the  Dead  Sea,  is  an  absolutely  azoic  body 
of  water,  supposed  I  had  made  a  new  discovery  in 
ascertaining  the  existence  of  insect  remains  there. 
Since  then  I  learn,  through  Captain  Stansbury,  that 
the  foul  mass  was  examined  by  Mr.  T.  E.  Peale,  who 
pronounced  it  to  consist,  nine  tenths  of  larvae  and 
exuviae  of  Chironomus,  or  some  species  of  mosquito 
probably  undescribed;  the  remainder  of  fragments 
of  other  aquatic  diptera  and  hymenoptera,  both  in 
the  pupa  and  the  mature  state.  Deposits  similar  to 
this  at  Black  Rock  are  found  in  all  the  shallow  bays 
of  the  lake,  extending  in  layers  a  foot  deep  over 


THE  DEAD   SEA. 

areas  of  many  hundred  acres  in  extent,  and  always 
horrible  in  their  fetor,  blackening  the  water  like  cut- 
tle-fish fluid,  and  producing  an  overwhelming  nausea 
wherever  they  were  stirred  up.  Neither  Mr.  Peale 
nor  Captain  Stansbury  could  arrive  at  any  theory 
adequate  for  the  explanation  of  the  vast  quantity  in 
which  the  exuviae  appeared.  The  latter,  on  page  177 
of  his  most  interesting  report,  says :  "  The  question 
where  these  larvae  originated,  presents  a  curious  sub- 
ject of  inquiry.  Nothing  living  has  yet  been  de- 
tected in  the  lake,  and  only  a  few  large  insects  in 
the  brackish  springs,  which  do  not  at  all  resemble 
these  either  in  shape  or  size."  I  have  seen  no  obser- 
vations since  his  which  throw  any  light  upon  the  sub- 
ject, unless  my  own  be  deemed  thus  successful.  1  did 
detect  something  living  in  the  lake  water,  though 
whether  its  connection  with  the  larvae  be  capable  of 
making  out  I  am  not  prepared  to  say.  I  brought 
back  from  the  lake  to  Townsend's  a  quart-bottle  of 
the  water,  gathered  near  the  shore,  but  without  dis- 
turbing the  filthy  deposit,  and  placed  it  in  a  west 
window,  where  it  had  the  sun  for  the  last  five  hours 
of  the  afternoon.  For  the  first  day  or  two  the  water 
remained  perfectly  clear.  About  the  third  day  I  ob- 
served small  vermicular  animals  in  it.  I  then  neg- 
lected it  until  I  came  to  pack  the  bottle  the  night 
before  leaving,  —  it  may  have  been  a  week  from  the 
time  of  my  visit  to  Salt  Lake.  Then  for  the  first 
time  I  discovered  a  number  of  minute  diptera  float- 
ing in  it  dead.  They  resembled,  in  all  but  size,  our 
common  house-fly,  or  the  Platte  Kiver  buffalo-gnat, 
rather  than  a  mosquito.  It  then  struck  me  as  pos- 
sible that  the  great  number  of  these  larvae  deposited 
on  the  lake  bottom  may  be  accounted  for  by  suppos- 


400  -THE   HEART  OF  THE   CONTINENT. 

ing  a  species  whose  rapidity  of  transit  through  their 
various  stages  of  existence  was  as  great  as  that  of 
the  insects  found  in  my  bottle,  and  whose  mature 
life  in  the  winged  state  was  merely  ephemeral.  I 
think  my  experiment,  in  spite  of  its  rudeness,  still 
free  from  most  of  the  sources  of  error.  The  water 
was  so  clear  when  I  bottled  it  that  I  certainly  should 
have  seen  any  object  as  large  as  the  dead  flies  I 
finally  found  there ;  and  as  the  bottle  was  never  for 
a  moment  uncorked,  their  eventual  existence  in  it 
could  not  be  accounted  for  by  their  having  entered 
in  their  winged  state  at  the  hotel,  and  perished  there. 
I  am  therefore  compelled  to  believe  that  the  micro- 
scopic ova  of  some  aquatic  dipterous  species  were 
suspended  in  the  lake  water  when  I  bottled  it ;  that 
they  hatched  into  the  grub  state  in  the  sunlight  at 
my  window,  appearing  as  the  worms  I  first  noticed ; 
and  the  flies  were  their  matured  form  (the  sediment 
at  the  bottom  containing  their  pupae),  dead  when  I 
found  them,  either  because  they  had  no  means  of  es- 
cape into  the  air,  or  because  they  were  ephemeral, 
and  had  run  their  full  cycle.  I  cannot  account  for 
the  existence  of  such  vast  masses  of  exuviae  in  the 
lake  on  the  ground  that  they  are  the  sloughs  of  an 
extinct  race  or  of  an  extant  one  accumulated  through 
many  ages,  as  the  preservation  of  their  forms,  and  the 
still  active  putrefaction  at  whose  expense  the  terrible 
stench  is  kept  up,  necessitate  a  comparatively  recent 
origin.  It  seems  strange  how  such  putrefaction  can 
go  on  anyhow  in  a  pickle  as  strong  as  that  of  Salt 
Lake;  but  the  probable  truth  is  that  it  is  commenced 
in  the  open  air  and  hot  sun,  where  the  exuviae  are 
cast  up  by  the  waves  on  the  beach. 

I  leave  a  subject  which  would  be  wholly  unpleasant 


THE   DEAD   SEA.  401 

but  for  its  bearings  on  the  interesting  scientific  ques- 
tion whether  or  not  Salt  Lake  is  uninhabited,  with  a 
passing  reference  to  the  fact  that  Governor  Cummings 
mentioned  to  Captain  Burton  his  having  seen  in  the 
lake  a  reddish  vermicular  animal,  about  as  long  as  the 
top  joint  of  his  little  finger,  who  had  spun  himself  a 
sheltering  web  inside  of  a  curled  leaf  a  few  inches 
long.  This  may  be  some  new  variety  of  the  caddis- 
worm,  and  it  would  be  an  interesting  subject  for  ex- 
amination. 

After  wading  this  sty  of  concentrated  nastiness 
(which  nothing  ever  pushed  me  through  but  scientific 
enthusiasm,  and  the  reflection  how  ashamed  I  should 
hereafter  be  if  compelled  to  acknowledge  that  I  had 
stood  on  the  Salt  Lake  margin,  without  having 
breasted  its  waters),  I  came,  nearly  a  hundred  feet 
from  shore,  into  a  depth  where  I  could  comfortably 
swim.  Once  fairly  in,  I  found  the  water  very  exhil- 
arating. It  was  as  cold  to  the  feel  as  the  ocean  at 
Long  Branch  in  the  bathing  season,  and  from  this 
cause,  with  its  intense  brininess  in  addition,  gave  me 
a  tonic  sensation  like  a  brisk  shower-bath.  I  felt 
none  of  the  acidity  and  burning  with  which  the  lake 
affects  some  skins — only  a  pleasant  pungent  sense  of 
being  in  pickle,  such  as  a  self-conscious  gherkin  might 
experience  in  Cross  &  Blackwell's  aristocratic  bath 
of  condiments,  after  he  had  set  his  mind  at  rest  about 
copper  by  reading  the  assurance  on  the  label,  and 
intrusted  himself  with  full  abandon  to  his  luxurious 
immersion.  I  swam  out  about  twenty  rods  into  the 
lake,  and  supposed  I  must  certainly  be  a  long  way 
beyond  my  depth,  so  stopped  to  tread  water  and 
look  about  me.  As  I  threw  my  feet  down,  to  my  ut- 
ter surprise  they  touched  bottom  again ;  and  the  way 

26 


402       THE  HEART  OF  THE  CONTINENT. 

that  I  put  out  for  the  open  sea,  remembering  the 
horrible  pit  and  miry  clay,  was  a  caution !  I  had  to 
get  some  distance  beyond  the  line  of  Black  Rock  be- 
fore I  found  water  over  my  head.  At  that  time  I  had 
no  idea  of  what  a  shallow  puddle  the  Great  Salt  Lake 
was.  I  thought,  as  I  suppose  most  people  do,  that  it 
was  at  least  a  thousand  feet  deep  in  the  middle,  and 
shelved  off  rapidly  from  the  bold  limestone  precipices 
which  wall  it  at  Black  Rock.  Instead  of  that,  it  is 
almost  everywhere  bordered  by  shallows,  reaching 
from  a  hundred  rods  to  several  miles  from  the  shore ; 
and  the  very  deepest  place  found  by  that  most 
minute  and  painstaking  of  hydrographers,  Captain 
Stansbury,  after  innumerable  soundings  in  every  di- 
rection throughout  the  lake,  was  only  thirty-five  feet ! 
In  some  portions  of  the  lake,  many  miles  from  either 
shore,  I  might  have  swam  for  half  a  day  without  get- 
ting beyond  my  depth. 

In  common  with  all  travellers,  I  experienced  the 
most  curious  sensations  of  over-buoyancy.  Without 
special  effort,  it  was  impossible  to  keep  myself  under 
sufficiently  to  have  it  feel  like  swimming,  and  not  like 
lying  on  a  sort  of  India  rubber  bed,  where  I  made  no 
break,  but  only  a  dent  in  some  elastic  substance  which 
sprung  under  me.  When  I  trod  water,  my  bust 
emerged  to  considerably  below  the  armpits  ;  when  I 
lay  prone  or  on  my  back,  so  much  of  the  uppermost 
surface  was  exposed  that  I  had  to  change  my  position 
frequently,  in  order  to  keep  myself  uniformly  wet, 
so  as  not  to  be  scorched  by  the  perpendicular  rays  of 
the  midsummer  sun.  It  would  be  a  splendid  place 
for  a  swimming-school.  No  confidence  need  be  taught 
there — nothing  but  the  motions.  And  a  more  de- 
lightful gamboling-place  cannot  be  imagined.  I  was 


THE  DEAD   SEA.  403 

always  passionately  fond  of  swimming ;  and  after  my 
long,  dry,  dusty  ride  across  the  plains  and  moun- 
tains, where  I  had  enjoyed  no  bath  with  ample  room 
to  disport  myself,  or  indeed  any  swim  at  all  since  I 
ducked  in  the  crystal  flood  of  the  "  Fonten-kee-boo- 
yeh  "  at  the  base  of  Pike's  Peak,  it  may  be  conceived 
that  I  rioted  in  the  bracing  blue  brine  of  Utah  with  a 
perfect  boyish  delight.  I  could  scarcely  bear  to  leave 
it,  even  to  the  dinner  for  which  my  clamber  and  my 
swim  had  procured  me  an  appetite  as  boyish.  I 
stayed  in  till  all  the  rest  of  my  party  had  gone  out, 
then,  lying  flat  on  my  back,  with  my  head  to  the  land 
and  perfectly  motionless,  abandoned  myself  to  the 
cradling  motion  of  the  long  ground-swells,  trusting  to 
a  breeze  which  blew  directly  on  shore  to  waft  me 
gently  thitherward.  The  breeze  did  as  I  expected.  I 
drifted  in  very  rapidly  and  so  comfortably  that  I  could 
have  lain  on  my  soft  couch  and  slept  all  day.  Pres- 
ently I  put  down  my  hand  to  turn  over,  intending  to 
swim  the  rest  of  the  way  ashore  face  forward.  My 
palm  instantly  touched  bottom,  and  I  found  that  I  had 
floated  so  far  land-ward  that  I  was  in  water  only  six 
inches  deep !  The  fact  that  a  craft  of  a  full-grown 
man's  draught  of  water  no  more  touched  bottom  in  a 
shoal  like  that  than  in  mid-ocean,  is  the  best  illustra- 
tion I  can  give  of  the  remarkable  density  and  lifting 
power  of  the  Salt  Lake  water.  Glad  to  have  been 
saved  the  greater  part  of  my  return  journey  through 
the  dumping-ground  of  dead  gallinippers,  I  scrambled 
to  my  feet,  and  picked  my  way  over  the  daggery 
beach  to  the  kitchen  with  no  worse  result  than  a  heel- 
bruise.  I  had  from  hearsay  some  idea  of  the  incrusta- 
tions of  salt  which  appear  on  every  bather  in  Salt  Lake 
when  he  comes  out,  but  was  not  at  all  prepared  for  the 


404       THE  HEART  OF  THE  CONTINENT. 

reality.  The  evaporation  taking  place  while  I  walked 
the  trifling  distance  across  the  beach  to  the  house, 
was  sufficient  to  turn  me  into  a  pillar  of  salt,  or,  as 
an  old  Mormon  called  it,  to  "  Lotswificate  "  me.  From 
head  to  foot,  almost  without  a  break,  I  was  covered 
with  a  crystalline  film,  white  as  leprosy,  and  the  thick- 
ness of  ordinary  stove-door  isinglass.  I  had  been  a 
Nazarene  ever  since  leaving  New  York ;  and  the  effect 
of  my  long  hair  and  full  beard  with  the  salt  dried  into 
them  was  very  like  that  of  the  grasses  which  country 
ladies  amuse  themselves  by  vitrifying  with  saturated 
solutions  of  alum,  giving  me  the  appearance  of  a 
shaggy  Triton  wreathed  with  sea-weed  and  crystals. 
In  the  kitchen  I  found  that  very  necessary  conclusion 
to  a  Salt  Lake  swim,  a  wash-tub  full  of  fresh  water, 
and,  jumping  into  that,  divested  myself  of  my  acrid 
exuviae.  The  sensation  of  getting  off  the  salt  was 
very  grateful,  for,  as  I  got  drier,  it  made  my  skin  feel 
absolutely  thirsty  like  a  tongue ;  indeed,  a  smarting, 
burning  sensation  lingered  in  my  pores  to  a  greater 
or  less  degree  all  day ;  and  I  could  not  help  fancying 
that  it  made  my  fauces  dry  as  well  as  my  skin,  pro- 
ducing by  absorption  an  internal  thirst  corresponding 
to  the  outer  one.  This  is  not  to  be  wondered  at  when 
we  consider  the  great  affinity  of  salt  for  the  fluids  of 
the  body,  the  activity  of  all  the  absorbent  surfaces  in 
summer,  and  the  intense  brininess  of  the  lake  as  re- 
vealed by  the  analyses  made  during  Stansbury's  ex- 
pedition. The  brine  of  Salt  Lake,  in  point  of  den- 
sity, has  but  one  known  superior  on  the  globe  —  the 
waters  of  the  Dead  Sea.  In  a  hundred  parts  by 
weight,  the  latter  contain  24.580  of  solid  contents, 
and  the  former  22.422.  The  solid  contents  were  con- 
stituted in  the  following  proportions :  — 


THE  DEAD  SEA.  405 

Chloride  of  Bodium 20.196 

Sulphate  of  soda 1.834 

Chloride  of  magnesium  ......  0.252 

Chloride  of  calcium  (a  trace)  and  waste    .        .  0.140 

22.422 

(The  specimen  brought  home  by  Captain  Stansbury 
to  be  subjected  to  Dr.  Gale's  analysis  was  too  small  to 
be  examined  with  reference  to  any  other  components 
than  those  .here  stated,  and  omits  consideration  of  all 
gaseous  matters  held  in  solution  by  the  Salt  Lake 
waters,  which  are  likely  to  be  considerable,  especially 
along  the  shore,  where  decay  of  organic  bodies  is  con- 
stantly going  on,  and  sulphide  of  hydrogen  may  natu- 
rally be  looked  for.  Still,  for  all  practical  purpose, 
the  analysis  is  abundantly  precise.) 

The  waters  of  the  Dead  Sea  are  much  weaker  in 
chloride  of  sodium,  and  much  stronger  in  chloride  of 
magnesium;  containing  in  their  24.580  of  solid  con- 
tents only  10.360  of  the  former,  but  10.246  of  the 
latter,  while  their  chloride  of  calcium  amounts  to 
3.920  parts,  and  their  sulphate  of  soda  to  0.054.  The 
Salina  salt  wells  are  the  strongest  in  the  States,  and 
the  maximum  yield  of  their  brine  is  about  17 J  per 
cent,  in  solid  salt.  That  of  the  Salt  'Lake  brine  is 
about  20  per  cent.  It  will  be  seen  that  although  the 
density  of  the  Dead  Sea  water  is  about  two  per  cent, 
greater,  its  per  cent,  of  chloride  of  sodium  is  only 
about  one  half,  and  thus  the  waters  of  Salt  Lake  are 
by  nearly  three  per  cent,  the  strongest  natural  brine 
in  the  world.  The  Mormons  avail  themselves  of  it 
for  domestic  purposes  by  the  crudest  possible-  pro- 
cesses of  manufacture,  —  or  frequently  without  man- 
ufacture of  any  kind,  —  collecting  it  from  the  rocks, 
which  it  incrusts  in  large  quantities,  and  bringing  it 


406       THE  HEART  OF  THE  CONTINENT. 

to  the  city  by  cart-loads.  I  noticed  that  on  Town- 
send's  table  it  often  seemed  singularly  damp,  consid- 
ering the  dry  climate.  Dr.  Gale  explains  this  fact 
by  the  presence  of  the  chlorides  of  magnesium  and 
calcium,  both  of  which  are  very  deliquescent,  and  in 
dissolving  extend  their  deliquative  action  to  the  com- 
mon salt.  In  any  but  a  new  country,  where  people 
have  enough  to  do  without  attending  to  the  extreme 
refinements  of  domestic  life,  the  lake  salt  would  be 
refined,  instead  of  used  in  its  crude  state,  as  it  now  so 
generally  is.  Dr.  Gale's  method  for  this  purpose  is 
beautifully  simple  and  easy.  It  consists  merely  in 
pouring  lake  water,  either  just  as  it  is  bailed  up  or 
concentrated  by  boiling,  upon  a  heap  of  the  drying 
incrustations  laid  on  a*  blanket  or  other  porous  bot- 
tom. This  water  being  already  a  saturated  solution 
of  chloride  of  sodium,  or  nearly  so,  will  dissolve  little 
or  none  of  that  component,  but  takes  up  and  leaches 
away  all  the  other  chlorides  present.  After  repeating 
this  process  three  or  four  times,  and  allowing  the  re- 
siduary mass  to  crystallize  in  the  sun,  the  result  is 
pure  enough  for  all  practical  purposes.  If  absolute 
purity  is  desired,  another  filtration,  this  time  fresh 
water  at  a  temperature  of  91|°  F.  being  employed 
instead  of  salt,  will  remove  the  small  per  cent,  of 
Glauber-salts  still  remaining,  though  its  quantity  is 
not  sufficient,  if  left  in  the  table  salt,  to  produce  any 
cathartic  effect. 

The  road  which  we  had  come  is  one  of  the  emi- 
grant routes  to  California,  leading  from  Salt  Lake  City 
round  the  northern  promontory  of  the  Oquirrh  into 
the  Tuilla  Valley,  past  the  range  forming  that  val- 
ley's western  wall,  which  sinks  to  the  level  of  the 
lake  at  a  considerable  distance  from  its  shore,  instead 


THE  DEAD   SEA.  407 

of  dipping  boldly  into  its  waters  like  the  Oquirrh  or 
the  Wahsatch,  and  leaves  a  broad  plain  for  the  pas- 
sage of  the  road  further  west,  thence  striking  across 
the  desert  and  the  Humboldt  Mountains  to  the  Sierra 
Nevada,  and  climbing  over  the  latter  into  the  great 
Gold  State  of  the  Pacific.  The  other  principal  road, 
and  the  one  which  we  took  on  leaving  Salt  Lake  City 
for  good,  strikes  southerly  from  the  city  up  the  valley 
of  the  Jordan  to  Utah  Lake  and  Camp  Floyd  (now 
"Fort  Crittenden "),  and  traverses  a  more  southerly 
portion  of  the  Great  Desert  to  California.  The  for- 
mer route  is  taken  by  many,  indeed,  by  most  of  the 
emigrant  trains,  the  pasturage  and  springs  along  its 
course  being  plentier  and  more  excellent.  On  our 
way  back  to  the  city  we  encountered  a  long  train  of 
forty  or  fifty  wagons  drawn  by  mules  and  oxen,  and 
followed  by  herds  of  milch  cattle,  oxen,  and  yearlings, 
and  flocks  of  sheep.  The  drivers  were  a  fine-looking 
set  of  men,  unmistakably  Scandinavian  in  their  fea- 
tures, dress,  and  language  ;  muscular,  well  knit,  large- 
framed,  and  bronzed  by  long  exposure  over  the  moun- 
tains and  plains  which  they  had  travelled  for  twelve 
hundred  miles  between  the  Missouri  and  Mormon- 
dom.  The  women  were  apparently  a  better  grade  than 
those  who  visit  Salt  Lake  from  Sweden  without  going 
further,  and  sat  knitting,  singing,  and  tending  their 
babies  as  if  they  had  not  spurned  the  gospel  offers, 
and  were  not  now,  with  every  turn  of  their  heavy 
wagon-tires,  putting  further  behind  them  the  invita- 
tion to  stay  and  go  to  heaven  with  a  fractional  hus- 
band. Everybody  looked  contented  except  the  poor 
draught  animals,  who  lolled  painfully,  their  big  plead- 
ing eyes  telling  of  a  thirst  which  could  be  but  poorly 
slaked  at  the  scanty  and  brackish  springs  where  they 


408       THE  HEART  OF  THE  CONTINENT. 

stopped  just  as  we  met  them,  and  which  would  be 
only  intensified  as  they  proceeded  over  the  broad 
desert  area  between  here  and  the  Humboldt.  I  felt 
thirsty  myself,  and  got  out  of  our  wagon  to  drink  at 
the  well  where  the  herdsmen  were  supplying  their 
need.  The  water  was  a  warm,  nauseous  solution  of 
minerals,  which  betrayed  the  existence  of  sulphur  in 
the  soil  as  well  as  the  near  neighborhood  of  the  lake. 
I  drank  as  much  of  it  as  I  could,  hoping  that  it  would 
moisten  my  throat  sufficiently  to  last  till  I  could  get 
a  draught  from  the  city  conduits ;  but  its  effect  was 
only  to  sicken  even  my  far  from  fastidious  stomach, 
and  increase  my  thirst  to  such  a  miserable  degree 
that  Townsend's  was  doubly  welcome  when  we  ar- 
rived shortly  after  sundown.  The  effect  of  the  snow 
lying  in  the  lofty  valleys  between  the  mountain-tops 
of  the  Wahsatch  and  the  pure  red  lustre  of  the  Wah- 
satch  itself,  in  the  twilight  reflections  from  the  bril- 
liant heaven  over  the  Oquirrh,  behind  which  the  sun 
had  just  gone  down,  was  a  sight  of  such  magical 
beauty  as  no  pen  or  brush  can  hope  to  paint,  no  heart 
which  it  has  filled  with  ecstasy  can  ever  forget.  Nine 
thousand  feet  above  the  Jordan,  twelve  thousand 
above  the  sea,  inaccessible  in  many  places  to  any 
climbing,  and  accessible  nowhere  short  of  forty  or 
fifty  miles'  difficult,  devious,  and  dangerous  climb, — 
those  spotless  abysses  of  pearl  and  rose-tinted  opal, 
of  marble  and  clear  onyx,  contrasted  with  vast  masses 
of  bare  mountain  that  were  all  one  auroral  blush, 
looked  to  our  enamored  eyes  like  part  of  the  heaven 
itself — the  very  gates  and  foundations  of  the  city  of 
God. 


CHAPTER  IX. 

SEVEN  WEEKS  IN  THE  GREAT  YO-SEMITE. 

IT  is  as  hard  to  leave  San  Francisco  as  to  get  there. 
To  a  traveller  paying  his  first  visit  it  has  the  interest 
of  a  new  planet.  It  ignores  the  meteorological  laws 
which  govern  the  rest  of  the  world.  There  is  no 
snow  there.  There  are  no  summer  showers.  The 
tailor  recognizes  no  aphelion  or  perihelion  in  his 
custom :  the  thin  woolen  suit  which  his  patron  had 
made  in  April  is  comfortably  worn  until  April  again. 
The  only  change  of  stockings  there  is  from  wet  to 
dry,  or  from  soiled  to  clean.  Save  that  in  so-called 
winter  frequent  rainfalls  alternate  with  spotless  in- 
tervals of  amber  weather,  and  that  soi-disant  summer 
is  one  entire  amber  mass,  its  unbroken  divine  days 
concrete  in  it,  there  is  no  inequality  on  which  to  for- 
bid the  bans  between  May  and  December.  In  San 
Francisco  there  is  no  work  for  the  scene-shifter  of 
Nature  :  the  wealth  of  that  great  dramatist,  the  year, 
resulting  in  the  same  manner  as  the  poverty  of  dab- 
blers in  private  theatricals,  —  a  single  flat  doing  ser- 
vice for  the  entire  play.  Thus,  save  for  the  purpose 
of  notes  of  hand,  the  almanac  of  San  Francisco  might 
replace  its  mutable  months  and  seasons  with  one  great 
kindly,  constant,  sumptuous  All  the  Year  Round. 

Out  of  this  benignant  sameness  what  glorious  fruits 
are  produced !  Fruit  enough  metaphorical :  for  the 
scientific  man  or  artist  who  cannot  make  hay  while 


410       THE  HEART  OF  THE  CONTINENT. 

such,  a  sun  shines  from  April  to  November  must  be  a 
slothful  laborer  indeed.  But  fruit  also  literal :  for 
what  joy  of  vegetation  is  lacking  to  the  man  who 
every  month  in  the  year  can  look  through  his  study- 
window  on  a  green  lawn,  and  have  strawberries  and 
cream  for  his  breakfast,  —  who  can  sit  down  to  this 
royal  fruit,  and  at  the  same  time  to  apricots,  peaches, 
nectarines,  blackberries,  raspberries,  melons,  figs  both 
yellow  and  purple,  early  apples,  and  grapes  of  three 
kinds  ? 

Another  delightful  fact  of  San  Francisco  is  the  Oc- 
cidental Hotel.  Its  comfort  is  like  that  of  a  royal 
home.  There  is  nothing  inn-ish  about  it.  Remember- 
ing the  chief  hotels  of  many  places,  I  am  constrained 
to  say  that  I  have  never,  even  in  New  York,  seen  its 
equal  for  elegance  of  appointment,  attentiveness  of 
servants,  or  excellence  of  cuisine.  Having  come  to 
this  extreme  of  civilization  from  the  extreme  of  bar- 
barism, we  found  that  it  actually  needed  an  exertion 
to  leap  from  the  lap  of  luxury,  after  a  fortnight's 
pleasaunce,  and  take  to  the  woods  again  in  flannel 
and  corduroys. 

But  far  more  seductive  than  the  beautiful  bay,  the 
heavenly  climate,  the  paradisaical  fruits,  and  the  royal 
hotel  of  San  Francisco,  were  the  old  friends  whom  we 
found,  and  the  new  ones  we  made  there.  With  but 
one  exception  (and  that  an  express-company,  not  a 
man),  we  were  received  by  all  our  San  Francisco  ac- 
quaintance in  a  kind  and  helpful  manner,  with  a  wel- 
come and  a  cheer  as  delightful  to  ourselves  as  it  was 
honorable  to  them.  Need  I  say  whose  brotherly 
hands  were  among  the  very  first  outstretched  to  us, 
in  whose  happy  home  we  found  our  sweetest  rest,  by 
whose  radiant  face  and  golden  speech  we  were  most 


SEVEN  WEEKS  IN  THE  GREAT  YO-SEMITE.     411 

lovingly  detained  evening  after  evening  and  far  into 
the  night  ?  A  few  days  after  our  return  to  the  East, 
when  we  read  that  dreadful  message,  "  Starr  King  is 
dead"  the  lightning  that  carried  it  seemed  to  end  in 
our  hearts.  We  withered  under  it;  California  had 
lost  its  soul  for  us ;  at  noon  or  in  dreams  that  balmy 
land  would  nevermore  be  the  paradise  it  once  was  to 
us.  The  last  hand  that  pressed  our  own,  when  we 
sailed  for  the  Isthmus  on  our  way  home,  was  the 
same  that  had  been  first  to  give  us  our  California 
welcome.  Just  before  the  lines  were  cast  off,  Starr 
King  stood  at  the  door  of  our  state-room,  and  said,  — 

"  I  could  not  bear  to  have  you  go  away  without  one 
more  good-by.  Here  are  the  cartes-de-visite  I  prom- 
ised. They  look  hard-worked,  but  they  look  like  me. 
Good-by  !  God  bless  you !  I  hope  to  make  a  visit  to 
the  East  next  summer,  and  then  we  will  get  together 
somewhere  by  the  sea.  Good-by ! " 

He  went  down  the  ladder.  When  the  steamer 
glided  off,  his  bright  face  sent  benedictions  after  us 
as  far  as  we  could  see ;  and  then,  for  the  last  time  on 
earth,  that  great,  that  good,  that  beloved  man  faded 
from  our  sight,  —  but,  0 !  never  from  our  hearts, 
either  in  the  here  or  the  hereafter.  "  We  shall  see 
him,  but  not  now."  We  shall  be  together  with  him 
"  in  the  summer  by  the  sea ;  "  but  that  summer  shall 
have  other  glory  than  the  sun  to  lighten  it,  and  the 
sea  shall  be  of  crystal. 

King  was  to  have  joined  us  in  our  Yo-Semite  trip. 
We  little  knew  that  we  were  losing,  for  this  world, 
our  last  opportunity  of  close  daily  intercourse  with 
his  sweet  spirit,  though  we  were  grievously  disap- 
pointed when  he  told  us,  on  the  eve  of  our  setting 
out,  that  work  for  the  nation  must  detain  him  in  San 
Francisco,  after  all. 


412       THE  HEART  OF  THE  CONTINENT. 

If  report  was  true,  we  were  going  to  the  original 
site  of  the  Garden  of  Eden,  —  into  a  region  which 
out-Bendemered  Bendemere,  out-valleyed  the  valley 
of  Rasselas,  surpassed  the  Alps  in  its  waterfalls,  and 
the  Himmaryeh  in  its  precipices.  As  for  the  two 
former  subjects  of  comparison,  we  never  met  any 
tourist  who  could  adjust  the  question  from  his  own 
experience  ;  but  the  superiority  of  the  Yo-Semite  to 
the  Alpine  cataracts  was  a  matter  put  beyond  doubt 
by  repeated  judgments;  and  a  couple  of  English  offi- 
cers who  had  explored  the  wildest  Himmaryeh  scen- 
ery told  Starr  King  that  there  was  no  precipice  in 
Asia  to  be  compared  for  height  or  grandeur  with  Tu- 
toch-anula  and  Tis-sa-ack. 

"We  were  going  into  the  vale  whose  giant  domes 
and  battlements  had  months  before  thrown  their  pho- 
tographic shadow  through  Watkins's  camera  across 
the  mysterious  wide  Continent,  causing  exclamations 
of  awe  at  GoupiFs  window,  and  ecstasy  in  Dr. 
Holmes's  study.  At  Goupil's  counter  and  in  Starr 
King's  drawing-room  we  had  gazed  on  them  by  the 
hour  already,  —  I,  let  me  confess  it,  half  a  Thomas-a 
Didymus  to  Nature,  unwilling  to  believe  the  utmost 
true  of  her  till  I  could  put  my  finger  in  her  very 
prints.  Now  we  were  going  to  test  her  reported  lar- 
gess for  ourselves. 

No  Saratoga  affair,  this !  A  total  lack  of  tall  trunks, 
frills,  and  curling-kids.  Driven  by  the  oestrum  of  a 
Yo-Semite  pilgrimage,  the  San  Francisco  belle  for- 
sakes (the  Western  vernacular  is  "goes  back  on") 
her  back  hair,  abandons  her  capillary  "  waterfalls  " 
for  those  of  the  Sierra,  and,  like  John  Phoenix's  old 
lady,  who  had  her  whole  osseous  system  removed  by 
the  patent  tooth-puller,  departs,  leaving  her  "  skele- 


SEVEN  WEEKS  IN  THE   GREAT  YO-SEMITE.      413 

ton  "  behind  her.  The  bachelor  who  cares  to  see  un- 
hooped  womanhood  once  more  before  he  dies,  should 
go  to  the  Yo-Semite.  The  scene  was  three  or  four 
times  presented  to  us  during  our  seven  weeks'  camp 
there,  —  though  the  trip  is  one  which  might  well  cost 
a  feeble  woman  her  life. 

Our  male  preparations  were  of  the  most  pioneer 
description.  One  wintry  day  since  my  return  I  was 
riding  in  a  train  on  the  New  York  Central,  when  an 
undaunted  herdsman,  returning  Westward,  flushed 
with  the  sale  of  beeves,  accosted  me  with  the  ques- 
tion, "  Friend,  yeou've  travelled  consid'able,  and  be- 
lieve in  the  religion  of  Natur ',  don't  ye  ?  "  "Why 
so ? "  I  responded.  "  Them  boots"  replied  my  new 
acquaintance,  pointing  at  a  pair  with  high  knee-caps, 
like  those  our  party  wore  to  the  Yo-Semite.  Other- 
wise, we  took  the  oldest  clothes  we  had,  —  and  it  is 
not  difficult  to  find  that  variety  in  the  trunk  of  a  re- 
cent Overland  stager.  We  were  armed  with  Ballard 
rifles,  shot-guns,  and  Colt's  revolvers  which  had  come 
with  us  across  the  Continent ;  our  ammunition  we  got 
in  San  Francisco,  together  with  all  such  commissa- 
riat luxuries  as  were  worth  transportation :  our  ne- 
cessaries we  left  to  be  purchased  at  that  jumping-off 
place  of  civilization,  Mariposa,  whence  we  were  to 
start  our  pack-mules  into  the  wilderness.  Let  me 
recommend  tourists  like  ourselves  to  include  in  the 
former  catalogue  plenty  of  canned  fruits,  sardines, 
and  apple-butter, — in  the  latter,  a  jug  of  sirup  for 
the  inevitable  camp  slapjacks.  No  woodsman,  as  will 
presently  appear  in  our  narrative,  can  tell  when  a 
slapjack  may  be  the  last  plank  between  him  and 
starvation ;  and  to  this  plank  how  powerfully  sirup 
enables  him  to  stick ! 


414      THE  HEART  OF  THE  CONTINENT. 

The  only  portion  of  our  outfit  which  would  have 
pleased  an  exquisite  (and  he  must  be  rather  of  the 
Count  Devereux  than  the  Foppington  Flutter  school) 
was  our  horseflesh.  That  greatest  of  luxuries,  a  really 
good  saddle-animal,  is  readily  and  reasonably  attain- 
able in  California.  Everybody  rides  there ;  if  you 
wish  to  create  a  sensation  with  your  horsemanship  in 
the  streets  of  San  Francisco,  you  must  ride  ill,  not 
well :  everybody  does  this  last.  Even  since  the  horse- 
railroad  has  begun  to  clutter  Montgomery  Street  (the 
San  Franciscan  Boulevards)  with  its  cars,  it  is  a  daily 
matter  to  see  capitalists  and  statesmen  charging 
through  that  thoroughfare  on  a  gallop,  which,  if  re- 
peated in  Broadway  by  Henry  G.  Stebbins,  would  cost 
him  his  reputation  on  'Change  and  his  seat  in  Con- 
gress. The  nation  of  beggars  on  horseback  which 
first  colonized  California  has  left  behind  it  many  tra- 
ditions unworthy  of  conservation,  and  multitudinous 
fleas  not  at  all  traditional,  but  even  less  keep  worthy; 
but  all  honor  be  to  the  Spaniards,  Greasers,  and  mixed 
breeds  for  having  rooted  the  noble  idea  of  horseman- 
ship so  firmly  in  the  country  that  even  street-rail- 
roads cannot  uproot  it,  and  that  Americans  who  never 
sat  even  so  little  as  an  Atlantic  State's  pony,  on  com- 
ing here  presently  take  to  the  saddle  with  all  their 
hearts.  In  most  of  the  smaller  California  towns,  a 
very  serviceable  half  or  quarter-breed  saddle-horse  is 
to  be  had  for  forty  dollars,  —  the  "  breed  "  portion  of 
his  blood  being  drawn  from  an  Eastern  stallion,  the 
remaining  fraction  being  native  or  Mustang  stock. 
This  animal,  if  need  be,  will  live  on  road-side  crop- 
pings  nearly  as  well  as  a  mule, —  travel  all  day  long 
on  an  easy  "  lope,"  never  offering  to  stop  till  fatigue 
makes  him  fall,  —  and,  if  you  let  him,  will  take  you 


SEVEN  WEEKS   IN  THE  GREAT  YO-SEMITE.      415 

through  chaparrals,  and  up  and  down  precipices  at 
whose  bare  suggestion  an  Eastern  horse  would  break 
his  legs.  Our  party,  seeking  rather  more  ambitious 
mounts,  supplied  itself,  after  a  tour  through  the  San 
Francisco  stables,  with  saddle-animals  at  an  average 
of  seventy  dollars  apiece.  This,  payable  in  gold,  then 
amounted  to  one  hundred  dollars  in  notes ;  but  the 
New  York  market  could  not  have  furnished  us  with 
such  horses  for  three  hundred  dollars. 

It  may  seem  as  if,  like  most  cavalcades,  we  should 
never  get  started,  but  I  must  linger  a  moment  to  do 
justice  to  our  accoutrements.  If  there  be  a  more 
perfect  saddle  than  the  Californian,  I  would  ride  bare- 
back a  good  way  to  get  it.  Anything  more  unlike  the 
slippery  little  pad  on  which  we  of  the  East  amble 
about  parks  and  suburban  roads  cannot  be  imagined. 
It  is  not  for  a  day,  but  for  all  time,  and  for  those  who 
spend  nearly  the  latter  in  it.  Its  wooden  skeleton  is 
as  scientifically  fitted  to  the  rider's  form  as  an  old 
"  incroyabk's  "  pair  of  pantaloons.  There  is  no  such 
thing  as  getting  tired  in  or  of  it.  Kising  to  the  lower 
lumbar  vertebrae  behind,  and  in  front  terminating 
gracefully  in  a  broad-topped  pommel,  it  enables  one 
to  lean  back  in  descending,  forward  in  climbing,  the 
great  ridges  on  the  path  of  California  travel,  —  thus 
affording  capital  relief  both  to  one's  self  and  one's 
horse,  and  bringing  in  both  from  a  fifty  miles'  march 
comparatively  unjaded. 

The  stirrups  of  this  saddle  are  broad  hickory  hoops, 
shaped  nearly  like  an  Omega  upside-down  (u),  left 
unpolished  so  as  to  afford  the  most  unshakable  foot- 
ing, covered  with  a  half-shoe  of  the  stoutest  leather, 
which  renders  it  impossible  for  the  toe  to  slip  through 
or  the  ankle  to  foul  under  any  circumstances.  At- 


416      THE  HEART  OF  THE  CONTINENT. 

tached  to  the  straps  from  which  these  swing  is  a  wide 
and  neatly  ornamented  stirrup-leather,  which  effectu- 
ally prevents  the  grazing  of  the  rider's  leg.  The  sur- 
cingle, or,  Calif  ornice,  the  cinch,  is  a  broad  strip  of  hair- 
cloth with  a  padded  ring  at  either  end,  through 
which  you  reeve  and  fasten  with  a  half-hitch  stout 
straps  sewed  to  other  rings  under  the  saddle  flaps. 
This  arrangement  is  not  only  far  securer  than  our 
Eastern  buckle,  but  enables  you  to  graduate  the 
tightness  of  your  girth  much  more  delicately,  and 
make  a  far  snugger  fit. 

The  only  particular  in  which  I  could  not  commend 
and  adopt  the  native  practice  was  the  Mexican  bit. 
It  is  a  dreadful  instrument  of  torture,  putting  im- 
mense leverage  in  the  rider's  hands,  and  enabling  him 
at  will  to  tear  the  mouth  of  his  horse  to  pieces ;  in- 
deed, the  horse  on  which  it  is  used  is  guided  entirely 
by  pressure  on  the  opposite  side  of  the  neck  from  that 
in  which  one  seeks  to  turn  him.  Our  Eastern  way  of 
drawing  his  head  around  would  so  lift  the  bit  as  to 
drive  him  frantic.  There  are  very  few  horses  of  any 
breed,  even  the  mustang,  that  never  stumble ;  and  as 
I  prefer  lifting  my  horse  to  letting  him  break  his 
knees  or  neck,  I  want  a  bridle  I  can  pull  upon  with- 
out tearing  his  mouth.  So,  in  spite  of  its  handsome 
appearance  and  the  very  manageable  single  white 
cord  into  which  its  two  reins  are  braided,  I  eschewed 
the  Mexican  head-gear,  and  took  the  ordinary  Eastern 
snaffle  and  curb.  Immense  spurs  completed  our  ac- 
coutrement, —  whips  being  here  unknown. 

I  may  as  well  make  a  word-map  of  our  route  be- 
fore going  farther.  Pilgrims  to  the  Yo-Semite  ship 
themselves  and  their  horses  from  San  Francisco  by 
steamer  to  Stockton.  This  town  is  on  the  San  Jo- 


SEVEN  WEEKS   IN  THE  GREAT  YO-SEMITE.      417 

aquin,  the  most  northerly  of  a  series  of  rivers  fed  di- 
rectly from  the  Sierra  Nevada  water-shed,  —  a  series, 
indeed,  continued  through  much  of  the  still  lower 
Pacific  coast  to  the  Isthmus  of  Nicaragua.  The  Sac- 
ramento drains  quite  a  different  region,  that  of  the 
broad  plains  between  the  Sierra  and  the  Coast  range, 
occupying  the  northern  portion  of  the  State,  —  re- 
sembling in  its  physical  features,  much  more  than 
any  of  the  Pacific  streams  beside,  the  large  isolated 
trunks  which  drain  the  east  slope  of  the  Alleghanies. 
The  Colorado  is  almost  the  only  other  large  river  cre- 
ated from  many  tributaries,  which  debouches  between 
the  Columbia  and  the  Isthmus,  —  and  that  rises  east 
of  the  mathematical  axis  of  the  Rocky  Mountains. 
The  Yo-Semite  Valley  is  one  of  the  cradles  through 
which  the  short  Sierra-draining  rivers  reach  the 
ocean ;  its  threading  stream  is  the  Merced ;  and  if 
on  any  good  United  States  Survey  map  you  will 
please  to  follow  that  river  back  to  the  mountains, 
when  your  finger-nail  touches  the  Sierra  it  will  be 
(or  would,  were  the  maps  somewhat  correcter)  in  the 
Great  Yo-Semite.  You  will  then  see  that  our  course 
led  us  across  three  streams,  after  leaving  the  San  Jo- 
aquin  at  Stockton  en  route  for  Mariposa,  —  the  Stanis- 
laus, the  Tuolomne,  and  the  main  Merced.  The  dis- 
tance from  Stockton  to  Mariposa  is  about  one  hun- 
dred miles,  a  small  part  of  the  way  between  fenced 
ranches,  a  much  greater  part  on  wide,  open,  rolling 
plains,  somewhat  like  those  of  Nebraska,  embraced 
between  the  two  great  ranges  of  the  State.  Here 
and  there  you  find  an  isolated  herdsman  or  a  small 
settlement  dropped  down  in  this  not  unfruitful  waste, 
and  thrice  you  come  to  a  hybrid  town,  with  a  Span- 
ish plaza,  and  Yankee  notions  sold  around  it.  We 

27 


418       THE  HEART  OF  THE  CONTINENT. 

went  the  distance  leisurely,  consuming  four  days  to 
Mariposa,  for  we  stopped  here  and  there  to  sketch, 
"  peep,  and  botanize; "  besides,  we  were  dragging  with 
us  a  Jersey  wagon,  bought  second-hand  in  Stockton, 
in  which  we  carried  our  heavier  outfit  till  we  should 
get  our  extra  pack-beasts  at  Mariposa,  and  to  which 
we  had  harnessed  for  their  first  time  an  implacable 
white  mule  with  an  incapable  white  horse,  to  neither 
of  which  each  other's  society  or  their  own  new  trade 
was  congenial. 

I  shall  not  linger  here  as  we  did  there.  To  an  or- 
nithologist the  whole  road  is  interesting, —  especially 
to  one  making  a  specialty  of  owls.  The  only  game 
within  easy  reach  is  the  dove  and  the  California 
ground-squirrel,  —  a  big  fellow,  much  like  our  North- 
eastern gray,  barring  the  former's  subterranean  hab- 
its. On  the  plains  threaded  by  the  road  the  pasture 
is  good,  save  in  the  extremest  drought  of  summer, 
when  the  great  herds  which  usually  feed  at  large  on 
and  between  the  river  bottoms  are  driven  to  the  rich 
green  grass  in  the  high  valleys  of  the  Sierra,  —  or 
ought  to  be  :  many  cattle  die  along  the  San  Joaquin 
every  summer  for  want  of  this  care.  Occasionally 
the  road  winds  through  the  refreshing  shadow  of  a 
grove  of  live-oaks,  standing  far  from  any  water  on  a 
sandy  knoll.  But  the  most  magnificent  trees  of  the 
oak  family  that  I  ever  beheld  were  growing  on  the 
banks  of  the  Tuolomne  River,  where  we  forded  it  at 
Roberts's  Ferry.  They  were  not  merely  in  dimension 
superior  to  the  finest  white-oaks  of  the  East,  but  sur- 
passed in  beauty  every  tradition  of  their  genus. 
Their  vast  gnarled  branches  followed  as  exquisite 
curves  as  belong  to  any  elm  on  a  New  England 
meadow,  and  wept  at  the  extremities  like  those  of 


SEVEN  WEEKS  IN  THE   GREAT  YO-SEMITE.     419 

that  else  matchless  tree,  —  possessing,  moreover,  a 
sumptuous  affluence  of  leafage,  an  arboreal  embon- 
point, unknown  to  their  graceful  sister  of  our  low- 
lands. 

At  Princeton,  a  thriving  suburb  of  Mariposa,  we 
completed  our  cavalcade  of  pack-animals,  transferred 
our  wagon-load  to  their  backs  (the  average  mule- 
pack  weighs  from  two  hundred  and  fifty  to  three 
hundred  pounds),  roped  it  there  in  the  most  ap- 
proved muletero  fashion,  and  started  into  the  wilder- 
ness. 

Let  us  call  the  roll.  Beside  the  three  gentlemen 
who  with  myself  had  formed  the  original  Overland 
party,  we  numbered  two  young  artists  of  great  merit 
then  sojourning  for  a  short  time  in  California,  —  Wil- 
liams, an  old  Roman,  and  Perry,  an  ancient  Dussel- 
dorf  friend,  —  also  a  highly  scientific  metallurgist 
and  physicist  generally,  Dr.  John  Hewston  of  San 
Francisco. 

To  serve  the  party,  we  secured  a  man  and  a  boy. 
Regarding  the  former,  perhaps  the  more  truthful 
assertion  would  be  that  he  secured  us ;  for,  as  will 
shortly  appear,  though  we  bought  his  services,  he 
sold  us  in  return.  We  picked  him  up  in  a  San  Fran- 
cisco employment  office,  after  looking  all  over  the 
city  for  a  respectable  groom  and  camp-cook,  and  find- 
ing that  in  a  scarce-labor  country  like  California  even 
fifty  gold  dollars  per  month,  with  keep  and  expenses, 
were  no  sufficient  bait  for  the  catch  we  wanted.  He 
was  a  meagre,  wiry  fellow,  with  sandy  hair,  service- 
able-looking hands,  and  no  end  to  self-recommenda- 
tions ;  but  then  it  was  impossible  to  ask  after  him  at 
his  "last  place,"  that  having  been  General  Johnston's 
camp  during  Buchanan's  forcible-feeble  occupation  of 


420       THE  HEART  OF  THE  CONTINENT. 

Utah.  As  he  said  he  had  been  a  teamster,  and  knew 
that  soup-meat  went  into  cold  water,  we  rushed 
blindly  into  an  engagement  with  him,  marriage-ser- 
vice fashion,  and  took  him  for  better  or  worse.  The 
thing  which  I  think  finally  "  fired  our  Northern 
hearts  "  and  clinched  the  matter  was  his  assertion  of 
nephewship  to  the  Secession  Governor  Vance,  whose 
name  he  bore,  combined  with  unswerving  personal 
loyalty.  Lest  by  some  future  Disraeli  this  be  writ- 
ten down  among  the  traditional  greennesses  of  learned 
men,  let  me  say  that  he  was  our  pis-aller,  —  we  find- 
ing ourselves  within  two  hours  of  the  Stockton  boat, 
with  nobody  to  help  pack  our  mules  or  care  for  them 
and  the  horses. 

The  boy  we  obtained  near  Mariposa:  He  was  an 
independent  squire  to  the  man  of  whom  we  got  the 
extra  animals,  and  accompanied  them  as  a  sort  of 
trustee  and  prochein  amy  to  an  orphan  family  of  mules. 
At  fifteen  years  and  in  jackets,  he  was  one  of  the 
keenest  speculators  in  fire-arms  I  ever  saw;  could 
swap  horses  or  play  poker  with  anybody ;  and,  take 
him  all  in  all,  in  the  Eastern  States,  at  least,  I  shall 
never  look  upon  his  like  again. 

Thus  manned,  and  leading,  turn-about,  four  or  five 
pack-beasts  by  as  many  tow-lines,  we  struck  up  into 
the  well-wooded  Sierra  foot-hills,  commencing  our 
climb  at  the  very  outset  from  Mariposa.  The  whole 
distance  to  the  Valley  was  fifty  miles.  For  twelve 
of  these  we  pursued  a  road  in  some  degree  practica- 
ble to  carts,  and  leading  to  one  of  those  inevitable 
steam  saw-mills  with  which  a  Yankee  always  cuts  his 
first  swath  into  the  tall  grass  of  Barbarism.  Passing 
the  saw-mill  in  the  very  act  of  astonishing  the  wil- 
derness with  a  dinner-whistle,  we  struck  a  trail  and 


SEVEN  WEEKS  IN  THE   GREAT  YO-SEMITE.     421 

fell  into  single  file.  Thenceforward  our  way  was 
almost  a  continuous  alternation  of  descent  and  climb 
over  outlying  ridges  of  the  Sierra.  Our  raw-recruited 
mules,  and  the  elementary  condition  of  our  intellects 
in  the  science  of  professional  packing,  spun  out  this 
portion  of  our  journey  to  three  days,  —  though  al- 
lowance is  to  be  made  for  the  fact  of  our  stopping 
at  noon  of  the  second  day  and  not  resuming  our 
trail  till  the  morning  of  the  third.  This  interim  we 
spent  in  visiting  the  Big  Trees,  which  are  situated 
four  or  five  miles  off  the  Yo-Semite  track.  . 

"  Clark's,"  where  tourists  stop  for  this  purpose,  is 
just  half-way  between  Mariposa  and  the  great  Valley. 
"  Clark  "  himself  is  one  of  the  best-informed  men,  one 
of  the  very  best  guides,  I  ever  met  in  the  Califor- 
nian  or  any  other  wilderness.  He  is  a  fine-looking, 
stalwart  old  grizzly-hunter  and  miner  of  the  '49  days, 
wears  a  noble  full  beard  hued  like  his  favorite  game, 
but  no  head-covering  of  any  kind  since  recovered 
from  a  fever  which  left  his  head  intolerant  of  even 
a  slouch.  He  lives  among  folk,  near  Mariposa,  in 
the  winter,  and  in  summer  occupies  a  hermitage 
built  by  himself  in  one  of  the  loveliest  lofty  valleys 
of  the  Sierra.  Here  he  gives  travellers  a  surprise 
by  the  nicest  poached  eggs  and  rashers  of  bacon, 
home-made  bread  and  wild-strawberry  sweetmeats, 
which  they  will  find  in  the  State. 

Before  reaching  Clark's,  we  had  been  astonished  at 
the  dimensions  of  the  ordinary  pines  and  firs,  —  our 
trail  for  miles  at  a  time  running  through  forests 
where  trees  one  hundred  and  fifty  feet  high  were 
very  common,  and  trees  of  two  hundred  feet  by  no 
means  rare,  while  some  of  the  very  largest  must 
have  considerably  surpassed  the  latter  measurement. 


422      THE  HEART  OF  THE  CONTINENT. 

But  these  were  in  their  turn  dwarfed  by  the  Big 
Trees  proper,  as  thoroughly  as  themselves  would 
have  dwarfed  a  common  Green  Mountain  forest.  I 
find  no  one  on  this  side  the  Continent  who  believes 
the  literal  truth  which  travellers  tell  about  these 
marvelous  giants.  People  sometimes  think  they  do, 
but  that  is  only  because  they  fail  to  realize  the  prop- 
osition. They  have  no  concrete  idea  of  how  the 
asserted  proportions  look.  Tell  a  carpenter,  or  any 
other  man  at  home  with  the  look  of  dimensions,  what 
you  have  seen  in  the  Mariposa  County  groves,  and 
his  eye  grows  incredulous  in  a  moment.  I  freely 
confess,  that,  though  I  always  thought  I  had  believed 
travellers  in  their  recitals  on  this  subject,  when  I  saw 
the  trees  I  found  I  had  bargained  to  credit  no  such 
story  as  that,  and  for  a  moment  felt  half-reproachful 
toward  the  friends  who  had  cheated  me  of  my  faith 
under  a  misapprehension. 

Take  the  dry  statistics  of  the  matter.  Out  of  one 
hundred  and  thirty-two  trees  which  have  been  meas- 
ured, not  one  underruns  twenty-eight  feet  in  circum- 
ference ;  five  range  between  thirty-two  and  thirty- 
six  feet;  fifty-eight  between  forty  and  fifty  feet; 
thirty-four  between  fifty  and  sixty;  fourteen  between 
sixty  and  seventy;  thirteen  between  seventy  and 
eighty ;  two  between  eighty  and  ninety ;  two  be- 
tween ninety  and  one  hundred;  two  are  just  one 
hundred;  and  one  is  one  hundred  and  two.  This 
last,  before  the  storms  truncated  it,  had  a  height  of 
four  hundred  feet.  I  found  a  rough  ladder  laid 
against  its  trunk,  —  for  it  is  prostrate, — and  climbed 
upon  its  side  by  that  and  steps  cut  in  the  bark.  I 
mounted  the  swell  of  the  trunk  to  the  butt,  and  there 
made  the  measurement  which  ascertained  its  diam- 


SEVEN  WEEKS  IN  THE   GREAT  YO-SEMITE.      423 

eter  as  thirty-four  feet,  —  its  circumference  one  hun- 
dred and  two  feet  plus  a  fraction.  Of  course  the 
thickness  of  its  bark  is  various ;  but  I  cut  off  some  of 
it  to  a  foot  in  depth,  and  there  was  evidently  plenty 
more  below  that. 

To  make  some  rough  attempt  at  a  conception  of 
what  these  figures  amount  to,  suppose  the  tree  fallen 
at  the  gable  of  an  ordinary  two-story  house.  You 
propose  to  cross  by  a  plank  laid  from  your  roof  to 
the  upper  side  of  the  tree.  That  plank  would  per- 
ceptibly slope  up  from  your  roof-peak.  Through 
anothe*r  tree,  lying  prostrate  also,  and  hollow  from 
end  to  end,  our  whole  cavalcade  charged  at  the  full 
trot  for  a  distance  of  one  hundred  and  fifty  feet.  The 
entire  length  of  this  tree  before  truncation  had  been 
about  three  hundred  and  fifty  feet.  In  the  hollow 
bases  of  trees  still  standing  we  easily  sheltered  our- 
selves and  horses.  We  tried  throwing  to  the  top  of 
some  of  them  with  ludicrous  unsuccess,  and  finally 
came  to  the  monarch  of  them  all,  a  glorious  monster 
not  included  in  the  above  table  of  dimensions,  as  most 
of  those  measured  are  still  living,  and  all  have  the 
bark  upon  them  still,  while  the  tree  is  to  some  extent 
barked  and  charred.  When  it  stood  erect  in  its  live 
wrappings,  it  measured  forty  feet  in  diameter, — over 
one  hundred  and  twenty  in  circumference !  Esti- 
mates, grounded  on  the  well-known  principle  of 
yearly  cortical  increase,  indisputably  throw  back  the 
birth  of  these  largest  giants  as  far  as  1200  B.  c.  Thus 
their  tender  saplings  were  running  up  just  as  the 
gates  of  Troy  were  tumbling  down,  and  some  of  them 
had  fulfilled  the  lifetime  of  the  late  Hartford  Charter 
Oak  when  Solomon  called  his  master-masons  to  re- 
freshment from  the  building  of  the  Temple.  We 


424      THE  HEART  OF  THE  CONTINENT. 

cannot  realize  time-images  as  we  can  those  of  space 
by  a  reference  to  dimensions  within  experience,  so 
that  the  age  of  these  marvelous  trees  still  remains 
to  me  an  incomprehensible  fact,  though  with  my 
mind's  eye  I  continue  to  see  how  mountain-massy 
they  look,  and  how  dwarfed  is  the  man  who  leans 
against  them.  We  lingered  among  them  half  a  day, 
the  artists  making  color-studies  of  the  most  pictur- 
esque, the  rest  of  us  idng  away  at  something  scien- 
tific, —  Botany,  Entomology,  or  Statistics.  In  Geol- 
ogy and  Mineralogy  there  is  nothing  to  do  here  or 
in  the  Valley,  —  the  formation  all  being  typical 
Sierra  Nevada  granite,  with  no  specimens  to  keep  or 
problems  to  solve.  Of  course  our  artists  neither  made 
nor  expected  to  make  anything  like  a  realizing  pic- 
ture of  the  groves.  The  marvelous  of  size  does  not 
go  into  gilt  frames.  You  paint  a  Big  Tree,  and  it 
only  looks  like  a  common  tree  in  a  cramped  coffin. 
To  be  sure,  you  can  put  a  live  figure  against  the  butt 
for  comparison ;  but,  unless  you  take  a  canvas  of 
the  size  of  Hay  don's,  your  picture  is  quite  as  likely 
to  resemble  Homunculus  against  an  average  timber- 
tree  as  a  large  man  against  Sequoia  gigantea.  What 
our  artists  did  was  to  get  a  capital  transcript  of 
the  Big  Trees'  color,  —  a  beautifully  bright  cinna- 
mon-brown, which  gives  peculiar  gayety  to  the  forest, 
"making  sunshine  in  the  shady  place ;"  also,  their 
typical  figure,  which  is  a  very  lofty,  straight,  and 
branchless  trunk,  crowned  almost  at  the  summit  by 
a  mass  of  colossal  gnarled  boughs,  slender  plumy 
fronds,  delicate  thin  leaves,  and  smooth  cones  scarce 
larger  than  a  plover's  egg.  Perhaps  the  best  idea  of 
their  figure  may  be  obtained  by  fancying  an  Italian 
stone-pine  grown  out  of  recollection. 


SEVEN  WEEKS  IN  THE   GREAT  YO-SEMITE.     425 

Between  all  the  ridges  we  had  hitherto  crossed, 
silvery  streams  leaped  down  intensely  cold  through 
the  granite  chasms,  —  all  of  them  fed  from  the  snow- 
peaks,  and  charmingly  picturesque,  —  most  of  them 
good  trout-brooks,  had  we  possessed  time  to  try  a 
throw ;  and  now,  on  leaving  Clark's,  we  crossed  the 
largest  of  these,  a  fork  of  the  Merced  which  flows 
through  this  valley.  For  twelve  miles  further  a  series 
of  tremendous  climbs  tasked  us  and  our  beasts  to  the 
utmost,  but  brought  us  quite  apropos  at  dinner-time 
to  a  lovely  green  meadow  walled  in  on  one  side  by 
near  snow-peaks.  A  small  brook  running  through  it 
speedily  furnished  us  with  frogs  enough  for  an  entree. 
Between  two  and  three  in  the  afternoon  we  set  out 
upon  the  last  stage  of  our  pilgrimage.  We  were  now 
nearly  on  a  plane  with  the  top  of  the  mighty  preci- 
pices which  wall  the  Yo-Semite  Valley,  and  for  two 
hours  longer  found  the  trail  easy,  save  where  it 
crossed  the  bogs  of  summit-level  springs. 

Immediately  after  leaving  the  meadow  where  we 
dined,  we  plunged  again  into  the  thick  forest,  where 
every  now  and  then  some  splendid  grouse  or  the 
beautiful  plume-crowned  California  quail  went  whir- 
ring away  from  before  our  horses.  Here  and  there 
abroad  grizzly  " sign "  intersected  our  trail.  The  tall 
purple  deer-weed,  a  magnificent  scarlet  flower  of 
name  unknown  to  me,  and  another  blossom  like  the 
laburnum,  endlessly  varied  in  its  shades  of  roseate, 
blue,  or  the  compromised  tints,  made  the  hill-sides 
gorgeous  beyond  human  gardening.  All  these  were 
scentless ;  but  one  other  flower,  much  rarer,  made 
fragrance  enough  for  all.  This  was  the  "  Lady  Wash- 
ington," and  much  resembled  a  snowy  day-lily  with 
an  odor  of  tuberoses.  Our  dense  leafy  surrounding 


426      THE  HEART  OF  THE  CONTINENT. 

hid  us  from  the  fact  of  our  approach  to  the  Valley's 
tremendous  battlement,  till  our  trail  turned  at  a 
sharp  pngle,  and  we  stood  on  "  Inspiration  Point.'* 

That  name  had  appeared  pedantic,  but  we  found  it 
only  the  spontaneous  expression  of  our  own  feelings 
on  the  spot.  -We  did  not  so  much  seem  to  be  seeing 
from  that  crag  of  vision  a  new  scene  on  the  old  fa- 
miliar globe,  as  a  new  heaven  and  a  new  earth  into 
which  the  creative  spirit  had  just  been  breathed.  I 
hesitate  now,  as  I  did  then,  at  the  attempt  to  give  my 
vision  utterance.  Never  were  words  so  beggared  for 
an  abridged  translation  of  any  Scripture  of  Nature. 

We  stood  on  the  verge  of  a  precipice  more  than 
three  thousand  feet  in  height,  —  a  sheer  granite  wall, 
whose  terrible  perpendicular  distance  baffled  all  vis- 
ual computation.  Its  foot  was  hidden  among  hazy 
green  spwulce,  —  they  might  be  tender  spears  of  grass 
catching  the  slant  sun  on  upheld  aprons  of  cobweb, 
or  giant  pines  whose  tops  that  sun  first  gilt  before  he 
made  gold  of  all  the  Valley. 

There  faced  us  another  wall  like  our  own.  How 
far  off  it  might  be  we  could  only  guess.  When  Na- 
ture's lightning  hits  a  man  fair  and  square,  it  splits 
his  yardstick.  On  recovering  from  this  stroke,  math- 
ematicians have  ascertained  the  width  of  the  Valley 
to  vary  between  half  a  mile  and  five  miles.  Where 
we  stood,  the  width  is  about  two. 

I  said  a  wall  like  our  own ;  but  as  yet  we  could  not 
know  that  certainly,  for  of  our  own  we  saw  nothing. 
Our  eyes  seemed  spell-bound  to  the  tremendous  pre- 
cipice which  stood  smiling,  not  frowning  at  us,  in  all 
the  serene  radiance  of  a  snow-white  granite  Boodh, 
—  broadly  burning,  rather  than  glistening,  in  the 
white-hot  splendors  of  the  setting  sun.  From  that 


SEVEN   WEEKS  IN  THE  GREAT  YO-SEMITE.     427 

sun,  clear  back  to  the  first  avant-courier  trace  of  pur- 
ple twilight  flushing  the  eastern  sky-rim  —  yes,  as  if 
it  were  the  very  butment  of  the  eternally  blue  Cali- 
fornian  heaven  —  ran  that  wall,  always  sheer  as  the 
plummet,  without  a  visible  break  through  which 
squirrel  might  climb  or  sparrow  fly, — so  broad  that  it 
was  just  faint-lined  like  the  paper  on  which  I  write  by 
the  loftiest  waterfall  in  the  world,  —  so  lofty  that  its 
very  breadth  could  not  dwarf  it,  while  the  mighty 
pines  and  Douglas  firs  which  grew  all  along  its  edge 
seemed  like  mere  lashes  on  the  granite  lid  of  the  Great 
Valley's  upgazing  eye.  In  the  first  astonishment  of 
the  view,  we  took  the  whole  battlement  at  a  sweep, 
and  seemed  to  see  an  unbroken  sky-line ;  but  as  ec- 
stasy gave  way  to  examination,  we  discovered  how 
greatly  some  portions  of  the  precipice  surpassed  our 
immediate  vis-d-vis  in  height. 

First,  a  little  east  of  our  off-look,  there  projected 
boldly  into  the  Valley  from  the  dominant  line  of  the 
base  a  square  stupendous  tower  that  might  have  been 
hewn  by  the  diamond  adzes  of  the  Genii  for  a  second 
Babel  experiment,  in  expectance  of  the  wrath  of  Al- 
lah. Here  and  there  the  tools  had  left  a  faint  scratch, 
only  deep  as  the  width  of  Broadway  and  a  bagatelle 
of  five  hundred  feet  in  length ;  but  that  detracted  no 
more  from  the  unblemished  foursquare  contour  of  the 
entire  mass  than  a  pin-mark  from  the  symmetry  of  a 
door-post.  A  city  might  have  been  built  on  its  grand 
flat  top.  And  0 !  the  gorgeous  masses  of  light  and 
shadow  which  the  falling  sun  cast  on  it,  —  the  shad- 
ows like  great  waves,  the  lights  like  their  spumy  tops 
and  flying  mist,  thrown  up  from  the  heaving  breast 
of  a  golden  sea !  In  California,  at  this  season,  the 
dome  of  heaven  is  cloudless;  but  I  still  dream  of 


428       THE  HEART  OF  THE  CONTINENT. 

what  must  be  done  for  the  bringing  out  of  Tu-toch- 
anula's  coronation-day  majesties  by  the  broken  win- 
ter sky  of  fleece  and  fire.  The  height  of  his  preci- 
pice is  nearly  four  thousand  feet  perpendicular ;  his 
name  is  supposed  to  be  that  of  the  Valley's  tutelar 
deity.  He  also  rejoices  in  a  Spanish  alias, — some 
Mission  Indian  having  attempted  to  translate  by  "El 
Capitan  "  the  idea  of  divine  authority  implied  in  Tu- 
toch-anula. 

Far  up  the  Valley  to  the  eastward  there  rose  high 
above  the  rest  of  the  sky-line,  and  nearly  five  thou- 
sand feet  above  the  Valley,  a  hemisphere  of  granite, 
capping  the  sheer  wall,  without  an  apparent  tree  or 
shrub  to  hide  its  vast  proportions.  This  we  imme- 
diately recognized  as  the  famous  To-coy-se,  better 
known  through  Watkins's  photographs  as  the  Great 
North  Dome.  I  am  ignorant  of  the  meaning  of  the 
former  name,  but  the  latter  is  certainly  appropriate. 
Between  Tu-toch-anula  and  the  Dome,  the  wall  rose 
here  and  there  into  great  pinnacles  and  towers,  but 
its  sky-line  is  far  more  regular  than  that  of  the  south- 
ern side,  where  we  were  standing. 

We  drew  close  to  the  edge  of  the  precipice  and 
looked  along  over  our  own  wall  up  the  Valley.  Its 
contour  was  a  rough  curve  from  our  stand-point  to  a 
station  opposite  the  North  Dome,  where  the  Valley 
dwindles  to  its  least  width,  so  that  all  the  interme- 
diate crests  and  pinnacles  which  topped  the  perpen- 
dicular wall  stood  within  our  vision  like  the  teeth  of 
a  saw,  clear  and  sharp-cut  against  the  blue  sky. 
There  is  the  same  plumb-line  uprightness  in  these 
mighty  precipices  as  in  those  of  the  opposite  side  ; 
but  their  front  is  much  more  broken  by  bold  prom- 
ontories, and  their  tabular  tops,  instead  of  lying  hori- 


SEVEN  WEEKS  IN  THE   GREAT  YO-SEMITE.  "  429 

zontal,  slope  up  at  an  angle  of  forty-five  degrees  or 
more  from  the  spot  where  we  were  standing,  and 
make  a  succession  of  oblique  prism-sections  whose 
upper  edges  are  between  three  and  four  thousand 
feet  in  height.  But  the  glory  of  this  southern  wall 
comes  at  the  termination  of  our  view  opposite  the 
North  Dome.  Here  the  precipice  rises  to  the  height 
of  nearly  one  sheer  mile  with  a  parabolic  sky-line, 
and  its  posterior  surface  is  as  elegantly  rounded  as 
an  acorn  cup.  From  this  contour  results  a  naked 
semi-cone  of  polished  granite,  whose  face  would  cover 
one  of  our  smaller  Eastern  counties,  though  its  ex- 
quisite proportions  make  it  seem  a  thing  to  hold  in 
the  hollow  of  the  hand.  A  small  pine-covered  glads 
of  detritus  lies  at  its  foot,  but  every  yard  above  that 
is  bare  of  all  life  save  the  palaeozoic  memories  which 
have  wrinkled  the  granite  Colossus  from  the  earliest 
seethings  of  the  fire-time.  I  never  could  call  a  Yo- 
Semite  crag  inorganic,  as  I  used  to  speak  of  everything 
not  strictly  animal  or  vegetal.  In  the  presence  of  the 
Great  South  Dome  that  utterance  became  blasphe- 
mous. Not  living  was  it  ?  Who  knew  but  the  debris 
at  its  foot  was  merely  the  cast-off  sweat  and  exuvice  of 
a  stone  life's  great  work-day?  Who  knew  but  the  vital 
changes  which  were  going  on  within  its  gritty  cellular 
tissue  were  only  imperceptible  to  us  because  silent 
and  vastly  secular  ?  What  was  he  who  stood  up  be- 
fore Tis-sa-ack,  and  said,  "  Thou  art  dead  rock ! "  save 
a  momentary  sojourner  in  the  bosom  of  a  cyclic  pe- 
riod whose  clock  his  race  had  never  yet  lived  long 
enough  to  hear  strike  ?  What,  too,  if  Tis-sa-ack  him- 
self were  but  one  of  the  atoms  in  a  grand  organism 
where  we  could  see  only  by  monads  at  a  time, — if 
he,  and  the  sun,  and  the  sea  were  but  cells  or  organs 


430      THE  HEART  OF  THE  CONTINENT. 

of  some  one  small  being  in  the  fenceless  vivarium  of 
the  Universe  ?  Let  not  the  ephemeron  that  lights  on 
a  baby's  hand  generalize  too  rashly  upon  the  non- 
growing  of  organisms !  As  we  thought  on  these 
things,  we  bared  our  heads  to  the  barer  forehead  of 
Tis-sa-ack. 

I  have  spoken  of  the  Great  South  Dome  in  the 
masculine  gender,  but  the  native  tradition  makes  it 
feminine.  Nowhere  is  there  a  more  beautiful  Indian 
legend  than  that  of  Tis-sa-ack.  I  will  condense  it 
into  a  few  short  sentences  from  the  long  report  of  an 
old  Yo-Semite  brave.  Tis-sa-ack  was  the  tutelar  god- 
dess of  the  Valley,  as  Tu-toch-anula  was  its  fostering 
god, —  the  former  a  radiant  maiden,  the  latter  an 
ever-young  immortal,  — 

"  amorous  as  the  month  of  May." 

Becoming  desperately  fascinated  with  his  fair  col- 
league, Tu-toch-anula  spent  in  her  arms  all  the  divine 
long  days  of  the  California  summer,  kissing,  dallying, 
and  lingering,  until  the  Valley  tribes  began  to  starve 
for  lack  of  the  crops  which  his  supervision  should 
have  ripened,  and  a  deputation  of  venerable  men 
came  from  the  dying  people  to  prostrate  themselves 
at  the  foot  of  Tis-sa-ack.  Full  of  anguish  at  her  na- 
tion's woes,  she  rose  from  her  lover's  arms,  and  cried 
for  succor  to  the  Great  Spirit.  Then,  with  a  terrible 
noise  of  thunder,  the  mighty  cone  split  from  heaven 
to  earth, — its  frontal  half  falling  down  to  dam  the 
snow-waters  back  into  a  lake,  whence  to  this  day  the 
beautiful  Valley  stream  takes  one  of  its  loveliest 
branches, — its  other  segment  remaining  erect  till 
this  present,  to  be  the  Great  South  Dome  under  the 
in  memoriam  title  of  Tis-sa-ack.  But  the  divine  maiden 


SEVEN   WEEKS  IN  THE  GREAT  YO-SEMITE.      431 

who  died  to  save  her  people  appeared  on  earth  no 
more,  and  in  his  agony  Tu-toch-anula  carved  her 
image  on  the  face  of  the  mile-high  wall,  as  he  had 
carved  his  own  on  the  surface  of  El  Capitan, — where 
a  lively  faith  and  good  glasses  may  make  out  the  effi- 
gies unto  this  day. 

Sometimes  these  Indian  traditions,  being  trans- 
lated according  to  the  doctrine  of  correspondences, 
are  of  great  use  to  the  scientific  man,  —  in  the  pres- 
ent instance,  as  embalming  with  sweet  spices  a  geo- 
logical fact,  and  the  reason  of  a  water-course  which 
else  might  become  obscured  by  time.  You  may  lose 
a  rough  fact  because  everybody  is  handling  it  and 
passing  it  around  with  the  sense  of  a  liberty  to  pre- 
sent it  next  in  his  own  way ;  but  a  fact  with  its  facets 
cut — otherwise  a  poem — is  unchangeable,  imperdi- 
table.  Seeing  it  has  been  manufactured  once,  nobody 
tries  to  make  it  over  again.  The  fact  is  regarded 
subject  to  liberal  translation ;  poems  circulate  virgin 
and  verbatim.  In  another  chapter  I  may  recur  to  this 
topic  with  reference  to  the  Columbia  River,  and  the 
capital  light  afforded  to  delvers  in  its  wondrous  trap- 
rock  by  the  lantern  of  Indian  legend. 

Let  us  leave  the  walls  of  the  Valley  to  speak  of  the 
Valley  itself,  as  seen  from  this  great  altitude.  There 
lies  a  sweep  of  emerald  grass  turned  to  chrysoprase  by 
the  slant-beamed  sun, — chrysoprase  beautiful  enough 
to  have  been  the  tenth  foundation-stone  of  John's 
apocalyptic  heaven.  Broad  and  fair  just  beneath  us, 
it  narrows  to  a  little  strait  of  green  between  the  but- 
ments  that  uplift  the  giant  domes.  Far  to  the  west- 
ward, widening  more  and  more,  it  opens  into  the 
bosom  of  great  mountain-ranges, — into  a  field  of  per- 
fect light,  misty  by  its  own  excess, — into  an  unspeak- 


432       THE  HEART  OF  THE  CONTINENT. 

able  suffusion  of  glory  created  from  the  phoenix-pile 
of  the  dying  sun.  Here  it  lies  almost  as  treeless  as 
some  rich  old  clover -mead;  yonder,  its  luxuriant 
smooth  grasses  give  way  to  a  dense  wood  of  cedars, 
oaks,  and  pines.  Not  a  living  creature,  either  man 
or  beast,  breaks  the  visible  silence  of  this  inmost  par- 
adise; but  for  ourselves,  standing  at  the  precipice, 
petrified,  as  it  were,  rock  on  rock,  the  great  world 
might  well  be  running  back  in  stone -and -grassy 
dreams  to  the  hour  when  God  had  given  him  as  yet 
but  two  daughters,  the  crag  and  the  clover.  We 
were  breaking  into  the  sacred  closet  of  Nature's  self- 
examination.  What  if,  on  considering  herself,  she 
should  of  a  sudden,  and  us-ward  unawares,  determine 
to  begin  the  throes  of  a  new  cycle, — spout  up  re- 
morseful lavas  from  her  long-hardened  conscience, 
and  hurl  us  all  skyward  in  a  hot  concrete  with  her 
unbosomed  sins  ?  Earth  below  was  as  motionless  as 
the  ancient  heavens  above,  save  for  the  shining  ser- 
pent of  the  Merced,  which  silently  to  our  ears 
threaded  the  middle  of  the  grass,  and  twinkled  his 
burnished  back  in  the  sunset  wherever  for  a  space  he 
glided  out  of  the  shadow  of  woods. 

To  behold  this  Promised  Land  proved  quite  a  dif- 
ferent thing  from  possessing  it.  Only  the  sitteros  of 
the  Andes,  our  mules,  horses,  and  selves,  can  under- 
stand how  much  like  a  nightmare  of  endless  roof- 
walking  was  the  descent  down  the  face  of  the  preci- 
pice. A  painful  and  most  circuitous  dug-way,  where 
our  animals  had  constantly  to  stop,  lest  their  impetus 
should  tumble  them  headlong,  all  the  way  past  steeps 
where  the  mere  thought  of  a  side-fall  was  terror, 
brought  us  in  the  twilight  to  a  green  meadow,  ringed 
by  woods,  on  the  banks  of  the  Merced. 


SEVEN  WEEKS  IN  THE   GREAT  YO-SEMITE.      433 

Here  we  pitched  our  first  Yo-Semite  camp, — call- 
ing it  "Camp  Kattlesnake,"  after  a  pestilent  little 
beast  of  that  tribe  which  insinuated  itself  into  my 
blankets,  but  was  disposed  of  by  my  artist  comrade 
before  it  had  inflicted  its  fatal  wound  upon  me.  Ke- 
moving  our  packs  and  saddles,  we  dismissed  their 
weary  bearers  to  the  deep  green  meadow,  with  no 
farther  qualification  to  their  license  than  might  be 
found  in  ropes  seventy  feet  long  fastened  to  deep- 
driven  pickets.  We  soon  got  together  dead  wood 
and  pitchy  boughs  enough  to  kindle  a  roaring  fire, — 
made  a  kitchen  table  by  wedging  logs  between  the 
trunks  of  a  three-forked  tree,  and  thatching  these 
with  smaller  sticks,  —  selected  a  cedar-canopied  piece 
of  flat  sward  near  the  fire  for  our  bed-room,  and  as 
high  up  as  we  could  reach  despoiled  our  fragrant  lair 
dacchini  for  the  mattresses.  I  need  not  praise  to  any 
woodsman  the  quality  of  a  sleep  on  evergreen-strew- 
ings. 

During  our  whole  stay  in  the  Valley,  most  of  us 
made  it  our  practice  to  rise  with  the  dawn,  and,  im- 
mediately after  a  bath  in  the  ice-cold  Merced,  take  a 
breakfast  which  might  sometimes  fail  in  the  game- 
department,  but  was  an  invariable  success,  considered 
as  slapjacks  and  coffee.  Then  the  loyal  nephew  of 
the  Secesh  Governor  and  the  testamentary  guardian 
of  the  orphan  mules  brought  our  horses  up  from 
picket ;  then  the  artists  with  their  camp-stools  and 
color-boxes,  the  sages  with  their  goggles,  nets,  botany- 
boxes,  and  bug-holders,  the  gentlemen  of  elegant  leis- 
ure with  their  naked  eyes  and  a  fish-rod  or  a  gun,  all 
rode  away  whither  they  listed,  firing  back  Parthian 
shots  of  injunction  about  the  dumpling  in  the  grouse- 
fricassee. 

28 


434       THE  HEART  OF  THE  CONTINENT. 

Sitting  in  their  divine  workshop,  by  a  little  after 
sunrise  our  artists  began  labor  in  that  only  method 
which  can  ever  make  a  true  painter  or  a  living  land- 
scape, —  color-studies  on  the  spot ;  and  though  I  can 
not  here  speak  of  their  results,  I  will  assert  that  dur- 
ing their  seven  weeks'  camp  in  the  Valley  they 
learned  more  and  gained  greater  material  for  future 
triumphs  than  they  had  gotten  in  all  their  lives  be- 
fore at  the  feet  of  the  greatest  masters.  Meanwhile 
the  other  two  vaguely  divided  orders  of  gentlemen 
and  sages  were  sight-seeing,  whipping  the  covert  or 
the  pool  with  various  success  for  our  next  day's  din- 
ner, or  hunting  specimens  of  all  kinds, — Agassizing, 
so  to  speak. 

I  cannot  praise  the  Merced  to  that  vulgar,  yet  ex- 
tensive class  of  sportsmen  with  whom  fishing  means 
nothing  but  catching  fish.  To  that  select  minority 
of  illuminati  who  go  trouting  for  intellectual  culture, 
because  they  cannot  hear  Booth  or  a  sonata  of  Bee- 
thoven's,—  who  write  rhapsodies  of  much  fire  and 
many  pages  on  the  divine  superiority  of  the  curve 
of  an  hyperbola  over  that  of  a  parabola  in  the  cast 
of  a  fly, —  who  call  three  little  troutlings  "a  splendid 
day's  sport,  me  boy ! "  because  those  rash  and  ill-ad- 
vised infants  have  been  deceived  by  a  feather-bug 
which  never  would  have  been  of  any  use  to  them, 
instead  of  a  real  worm  which  would  —  let  me  say 
that  we,  who  can  make  prettier  curves  and  deceive 
larger  game  in  a  dancing-party  at  home,  did  not  go 
to  the  Yo-Semite  for  that  kind  of  sport.  When  I 
found  that  the  best  bait  or  fly  caught  only  half  a 
dozen  trout  in  an  afternoon,  —  and  those  the  dull, 
black,  California  kind,  with  lined  sides,  but  no  spots, 
—  I  gave  over  bothering  the  unambitious  burghers 


SEVEN   WEEKS  IN   THE   GREAT  YO-SEMITE.      435 

of  the  flood  with  invitations  to  a  rise  in  life,  and  took 
to  the  meadows  with  a  butterfly-net. 

My  experience  teaches  that  no  sage  (or  gentleman) 
should  chase  the  butterfly  on  horseback.  You  are 
liable  to  put  your  net  over  your  horse's  head  instead 
of  the  butterfly's.  The  butterfly  keeps  rather  ahead 
of  the  horse.  You  may  throw  your  horse  when  you 
mean  to  throw  the  net.  The  idea  is  a  romantic  one ; 
it  carries  you  back  to  the  days  of  chivalry,  when 
court  butterflies  were  said  to  have  been  netted  from 
the  saddle, — but  it  carries  you  nowhere  else  in  par- 
ticular, unless  perhaps  into  a  small  branch  of  the 
Merced,  where  you  don't  want  to  go.  Then,  too,  if 
you  slip  down  and  leave  your  horse  standing  while 
you  steal  on  a  giant  PapiKo  which  is  sucking  the 
deer-weed  in  such  a  sweet  spot  for  a  cast,  your  horse 
(perhaps  he  has  heard  of  the  French  general  who 
said,  "Asses  and  savans  to  the  centre!")  may  dis- 
cover that  he  also  is  a  sage,  and  retire  to  botanize 
while  you  are  butterfly  ing, — a  contingency  which 
entails  your  wading  the  Merced  after  him  five  several 
times,  and  finally  going  back  to  camp  in  wet  disgust 
to  procure  another  horse  and  a  lariat.  An  experience 
faintly  hinted  at  in  the  above  suggestions  soon  con- 
vinced me  that  the  great  arm  of  the  service  in  but- 
terfly warfare  is  infantry.  After  I  had  turned  myself 
into  a  modest  Retiarius,  I  had  no  end  to  success. 
Mariposa  County  is  rightly  named.  The  honey  of 
its  groves  and  meadows  is  sucked  by  some  of  the 
largest,  the  most  magnificent,  and  most  widely  varied 
butterflies  in  the  world. 

At  noon  those  of  us  who  came  back  to  camp  had  a 
substantial  dinner  out  of  our  abundant  stores,  rein- 
forced occasionally  with  grouse,  quail,  or  pigeons, 


436      THE  HEART  OP  THE  CONTINENT. 

contributed  by  the  sportsmen.  The  artists  mostly 
dined  &  la  fourckette,  in  their  workshop,  —  something 
in  a  pail  being  carried  out  to  them  at  noon  by  our 
Infant  Phenomenon.  He  was  a  skeleton  of  thinness, 
and  an  incredibly  gaunt  mustang  was  the  one  which 
invariably  carried  the  lunch ;  so  we  used  to  call  the 
boy,  when  we  saw  him  coming,  "  Death  on  the  Pail- 
horse."  At  evening,  when  the  artists  returned,  half 
an  hour  was  passed  in  a  "private  view"  of  their  day's 
studies ;  then  came  another  dinner,  called  a  supper ; 
then  the  tea-kettle  was  emptied  into  a  pan,  and 
brush-washing  with  talk  and  pipes  led  the  rest  of  the 
genial  way  to  bed-time. 

In  his  charming  "Peculiar,"  Epes  Sargent  has 
given  us  an  episode  called  the  "  Story  of  Estelle." 
It  is  the  greatest  of  compliments  to  him  that  I  could 
get  thoroughly  interested  in  her  lover,  when  he  bore 
the  name  of  one  of  the  most  audacious  and  picaresque 
mortals  I  ever  knew, — our  hired  man,  who  sold  us — 
our —  But  hear  my  episode :  it  is 

THE   STOBY   OF   VANCE. 

Vance.  The  cognomen  of  the  loyal  nephew  with 
the  Secesh  uncle.  I  will  be  brief.  Our  stores  began 
to  fail.  One  morning  we  equipped  Yance  with  a 
horse,  a  pack-mule  to  lead  behind  him,  a  list  of  pur- 
chases, and  eighty  golden  dollars,  bidding  him  good- 
speed  on  the  trail  to  Mariposa.  He  was  to  return 
laden  with  all  the  modern  equivalents  for  corn,  wine, 
and  oil,  on  the  fifth  or  sixth  day  from  his  departure. 
Seven  days  glided  by,  and  the  material  for  more  slap- 
jacks with  them.  We  grew  perilously  nigh  our  bag- 
bottoms. 

One  morning  I  determined  to  save  the  party  from 


SEVEN   WEEKS  IN  THE    GREAT  YO-SEMITE.    437 

starvation,  and  with  a  fresh  supply  of  the  currency 
set  out  for  Mariposa.  At  Clark's  I  learned  thai;  our 
man  had  camped  there  about  noon  on  the  day  he 
left  us,  turned  his  horse  and  mule  loose,  instead  of 
picketing  them,  and  spent  the  rest  of  the  sunlight  in 
a  siesta.  When  he  arose,  his  animals  were  undiscov- 
erable.  He  accordingly  borrowed  Clark's  only  horse 
to  go  in  search  of  them,  and  the  generous  hermit  had 
not  seen  him  since. 

Carrying  these  pleasant  bits  of  intelligence,  I  re- 
sumed my  way  toward  the  'settlements.  Coming  by 
the  steam  saw-mill,  I  recognized  Vance's  steed  graz- 
ing by  the  way-side,  threw  my  lariat  over  his  head, 
and  led  him  in  triumph  to  Mariposa.  There  I  arrived 
at  eight  in  the  evening  of  the  day  I  left  the  Valley, — 
having  performed  fifty  miles  of  the  hardest  mountain 
trail  that  was  ever  travelled  in  a  little  less  than  twelve 
hours,  making  allowance  for  our  halt  and  noon-feed 
at  Clark's.  If  ever  a  California  horse  was  tried,  it 
was  mine  on  that  occasion ;  and  he  came  into  Mari- 
posa on  the  full  gallop,  scarcely  wet,  and  not  galled 
or  jaded  in  the  least. 

Here  I  found  our  mule,  whose  obstinate  memory 
had  carried  him  home  to  his  old  stable, — also  the  re- 
maining events  in  Vance's  brief,  but  brilliant  career. 
That  ornament  of  the  Utah  and  Yo-Semite  expedi- 
tions had  entered  Mariposa  on  Clark's  horse, — lost 
our  eighty  golden  dollars  at  a  single  session  of  bluf£ 
departed  gayly  for  Coulterville,  where  he  sold  Clark's 
horse  at  auction  for  forty  dollars,  including  saddle  and 
bridle,  and  immediately  at  another  game  of  bluff  lost 
the  entire  purchase-money  to  the  happy  buyer  (Clark 
got  his  horse  again  on  proving  title),  —  and  finally 
vanished  for  parts  unknown,  with  nothing  in  his 


438       THE  HEART  OF  THE  CONTINENT. 

pocket  but  buttons,  or  in  his  memory  but  villainies. 
Nowhere  out  of  California  or  old  Spain  can  there 
exist  such  a  modern  survivor  of  the  days  of  Gil  Bias ! 

Too  happy  in  the  recovery  of  Clark's  and  our  own 
animals  to  waste  time  in  hue  and  cry,  I  loaded  my 
two  reclaimed  pack-beasts  with  all  that  our  commis- 
sariat needed, — nooned  at  Clark's,  on  my  way  back, 
the  third  day  after  leaving  the  Valley  for  Mariposa, 
and  that  same  night  was  among  my  rejoicing  com- 
rades at  the  head  of  the  great  Yo-Semite.  That 
afternoon  they  had  come  to  the  bottom  of  the  flour- 
bag,  after  living  for  three  days  on  unleavened  slap- 
jacks without  either  butter  or  sirup.  I  have  seen 
people  who  professed  to  relish  the  Jewish  Passover- 
bread  ;  but,  after  such  an  experience  as  our  party's, 
I  venture  to  say  they  would  have  regarded  it  worthy 
of  a  place  among  the  other  abolished  types  of  the 
Mosaic  dispensation.  As  for  me  and  the  mule,-  we 
felt  our  hearts  swell-  within  us  as  if  we  had  come  to 
raise  the  siege  of  Ley  den.  In  that  same  enthusiasm 
shared  our  artists,  savans,  and  gentlemen,  embracing 
the  shaggy  neck  of  the  mule  as  he  had  been  a  brother 
what  time  they  realized  that  his  panniers  were  full. 
Can  any  one  wonder  at  my  early  words,  "  A  slapjack 
may  be  the  last  plank  between  the  woodsman  and 
starvation  ?  " 

Just  before  I  started  after  supplies,  our  party  moved 
its  camp  to  a  position  five  miles  up  the  Valley  beyond 
Camp  Eattlesnake,  in  a  beautiful  grove  of  oaks  and 
cedars,  close  upon  the  most  sinuous  part  of  the  Mer- 
ced margin,  with  rich  pasture  for  our  animals  imme- 
diately across  the  stream,  and  the  loftiest  cataract  in 
the  world  roaring  over  the  bleak  precipice  opposite. 
This  is  the  Yo-Semite  Fall  proper,  or,  in  the  Indian, 


CHO-LOOKE,   1HE   YO-SEM1TE  FALL.    See  page  439. 


SEVEN  WEEKS  IN  THE   GREAT   YO-SEMITE.      439 

"  Cho-looke."  By  the  most  recent  geological  surveys 
this  fall  is  credited  with  the  astounding  height  of 
twenty-eight  hundred  feet.  At  an  early  period  the 
entire  mass  of  water  must  have  plunged  that  dis- 
tance without  break.  At  this  day  a  single  ledge  of 
slant  projection  changes  the  headlong  flood  from  cat- 
aract to  rapids  for  about  four  hundred  feet ;  but  the 
unbroken  upper  fall  is  fifteen  hundred  feet,  and  the 
lower  thirteen  hundred.  In  the  spring  and  early 
summer  no  more  magnificent  sight  can  be  imagined 
than  the  tourist  obtains  from  a  stand-point  right  in 
the  midst  of  the  spray,  driven,  as  by  a  wind  blowing 
thirty  miles  an  hour,  from  the  thundering  basin  of 
the  lower  fall.  At  all  seasons  Cho-looke  is  the  grand- 
est mountain-waterfall  in  the  known  world. 

While  I  am  speaking  of  waterfalls,  let  me  not  omit 
"  Po-ho-n6,"  or  "  The  Bridal  Veil,"  which  was  passed 
on  the  southern  side  in  our  way  to  the  second  and 
about  a  mile  above  the  first  camp.  As  Tis-sa-ack  was 
a  good,  so  is  Po-ho-no  an  evil  spirit  of  the  Indian  my- 
thology. This  tradition  is  scientifically  accounted 
for,  in  the  fact  that  many  Indians  have  been  carried 
over  the  fall  by  the  tremendous  current  both  of  wind 
and  water  forever  rushing  down  a  canon  through 
which  the  stream  breaks  from  its  feeding-lake  twelve 
or  fifteen  miles  before  it  falls.  The  savage  lowers  his 
voice  to  a  whisper  and  crouches  trembling  past  Po- 
ho-n6 ;  while  the  very  utterance  of  the  name  is  so 
dreaded  by  him  that  the  discoverers  of  the  Valley 
obtained  it  with  great  difficulty.  This  fall  drops  on 
a  heap  of  giant  boulders  in  one  unbroken  sheet  of  a 
thousand  feet  perpendicular,  thus  being  the  next  in 
height  among  all  the  Valley  cataracts  to  the  Yo-Sem- 
ite  itself,  and  having  a  width  of  fifty  feet.  Its  name 


440      THE  HEART  OF  THE  CONTINENT. 

of  "  The  Bridal  Veil "  is  one  of  the  few  successes  in 
fantastic  nomenclature ;  for,  to  one  viewing  it  in  pro- 
file, its  snowy  sheet,  broken  into  the  filmy  silver  lace 
of  spray,  and  falling  quite  free  of  the  brow  of  the 
precipice,  might  well  seem  the  veil  worn  by  the  earth 
at  her  granite  wedding, — no  commemorator  of  any 
fifty  years'  bagatelle  like  the  golden  one,  but  crown- 
ing the  one  millionth  anniversary  of  her  nuptials. 

On  either  side  of  Po-ho-no  the  sky-line  of  the  pre- 
cipice is  magnificently  varied.  The  fall  itself  cuts  a 
deep  gorge  into  the  crown  of  the  battlement.  On 
the  southwest  border  of  the  fall  stands  a  nobly  bold, 
but  nameless  rock,  three  thousand  feet  in  height. 
Near  by  is  Sentinel  Rock,  a  solitary  truncate  pinnacle, 
towering  to  thirty-three  hundred  feet.  A  little  fur- 
ther are  "  Eleachas,"  or  "  The  Three  Brothers,"  flush 
with  the  front  surface  of  the  precipice,  but  their  up- 
per posterior  bounding-planes  tilted  in  three  tiers, 
which  reach  a  height  of  thirty-four  hundred  and  fifty 
feet. 

One  of  the  loveliest  places  in  the  Valley  is  the 
shore  of  Lake  Ah-wi-yah, — a  crystal  pond  of  several 
acres  in  extent,  fed  by  the  north  fork  of  the  valley 
stream,  and  lying  right  at  the  mouth  of  the  narrow 
strait  between  the  North  and  South  Domes.  By  this 
tranquil  water  we  pitched  our  third  camp,  and  when 
the  rising  sun  began  to  shine  through  the  mighty 
cleft  before  us,  the  play  of  color  and  chiaroscuro  on  its 
rugged  walls  was  something  for  which  an  artist  apt 
to  oversleep  himself  might  well  have  sat  up  all  the 
night.  No  such  precaution  was  needed  by  ourselves. 
Painters,  sages,  and  gentlemen  at  large,  all  turned  out 
by  dawn ;  for  the  studies  were  grander,  the  grouse 
and  quail  plentier,  and  the  butterflies  more  gorgeous 


SEVEN  WEEKS  IN  THE   GREAT  YO-SEMITE.     441 

than  we  found  in  any  other  portion  of  the  Valley. 
After  passing  the  great  cleft  eastward,  I  found  the 
river  more  enchanting  at  every  step.  I  was  obliged 
to  penetrate  in  this  direction  entirely  on  foot,  —  clam- 
bering between  squared  blocks  of  granite  dislodged 
from  the  wall  beneath  the  North  Dome,  any  one  of 
which  might  have  been  excavated  into  a  commodious 
church,  and  discovering,  for  the  pains  cost  by  a  re- 
connoissance  of  five  miles,  some  of  the  loveliest 
shady  stretches  of  singing  water  and  some  of  the 
finest  minor  waterfalls  in  our  American  scenery. 

Our  last  camp  was  pitched  among  the  crags  and 
forests  behind  the  South  Dome, — where  the  Middle 
Fork  descends  through  two  successive  waterfalls, 
which,  in  apparent  breadth  and  volume,  far  surpass 
Cho-looke,  while  the  loftiest  is  nearly  as  high  as  Po- 
ho-n6.  About  three  miles  west  of  the  Domes,  the 
south  wall  of  the  Valley  is  interrupted  by  a  deep  canon 
leading  in  a  nearly  southeast  direction.  Through 
this  canon  comes  the  Middle  Pork,  and  along  its  banks 
lies  our  course  to  the  great  "  Pi-wi-ack  "  (senselessly 
Englished  as  "  Vernal  ")  and  the  Nevada  Falls.  For 
three  miles  from  our  camp,  opposite  the  Yo-Semite 
Fall,  the  canon  is  threaded  by  a  trail  practicable  for 
horses.  At  its  termination  we  dismounted,  sent  back 
our  animals,  and,  strapping  their  loads  upon  our  own 
shoulders,  struck  nearly  eastward  by  a  path  only  less 
rugged  than  the  trackless  crags  around  us.  In  some 
places  we  were  compelled  to  squeeze  sideways  through 
a  narrow  crevice  in  the  rocks,  at  imminent  danger  to 
our  burden  of  blankets  and  camp-kettles ;  in  others 
we  became  quadrupedal,  scrambling  up  acclivities  with 
which  the  bald  main  precipice  had  made  but  slight 
compromise.  But  for  our  light  marching  order, — 


442       THE  HEART  OF  THE  CONTINENT. 

our  only  dress  being  knee-boots,  hunting-shirt,  and 
trousers, — it  would  have  been  next  to  impossible  to 
reach  our  goal  at  all. 

But  none  of  us  regretted  pouring  sweat  or  strained 
sinews,  when,  at  the  end  of  our  last  terrible  climb,  we 
stood  upon  the  oozy  sod  which  is  brightened  into  eter- 
nal emerald  by  the  spray  of  Pi-wi-ack.  Far  below  our 
slippery  standing  steeply  sloped  the  walls  of  the  rag- 
ged chasm  down  which  the  snowy  river  charges  roar- 
ing after  its  first  headlong  plunge ;  an  eternal  rainbow 
flung  its  shimmering  arch  across  the  mighty  cauldron 
at  the  base  of  the  fall ;  and  straight  before  us  in  one 
unbroken  leap  came  down  Pi-wi-ack  from  a  granite 
shelf  nearly  four  hundred  feet  in  height  and  sixty 
feet  in  perfectly  horizontal  width.  Some  enterpris- 
ing speculator,  who  has  since  ceased  to  take  the  orig- 
inal seventy-five  cents'  toll,  a  few  years  ago  built  a 
substantial  set  of  rude  ladders  against  the  perpendic- 
ular wall  over  which  Pi-wi-ack  rushes.  We  found  it 
still  standing,  and  climbed  the  dizzy  height  in  a 
shower  of  spray,  so  close  to  the  edge  of  the  fall  that 
we  could  almost  wet  our  hands  in  its  rim.  Once  at 
the  top,  we  found  that  Nature  had  been  as  accommo- 
dating to  the  sight-seer  as  man  himself;  for  the  ledge 
we  landed  on  was  a  perfect  breastwork,  built  from  the 
receding  precipices  on  either  side  of  the  canon  to  the 
very  crown  of  the  cataract.  The  weakest  nerves 
need  not  have  trembled,  when  once  within  the  para- 
pet, on  the  smooth,  flat  rampart,  and  looking  down 
into  the  tremendous  boiling  chasm  whence  we  had 
just  climbed. 

Above  Pi-wi-ack  the  river  runs  for  a  mile  at  the 
bottom  of  a  granite  cradle,  sloping  upward  from  it 
on  each  side  at  an  angle  of  about  forty-five  degrees, 


SEVEN  WEEKS  IN  THE   GREAT  YO-SEMITE.     443 

in  great  tabular  masses  slippery  as  ice,  without  a 
crevice  in  them  for  thirty  yards  at  a  stretch  where 
even  the  scraggiest  manzanita  may  catch  hold  and 
grow.  This  tilted  formation,  broken  here  and  there 
by  spots  of  scanty  alluvium  and  stunted  pines,  con- 
tinues upward  till  it  intersects  the  posterior  cone  of 
the  South  Dome  on  one  side  and  a  colossal  castellated 
precipice  on  the  other,  —  creating  thus  the  very  typ- 
ical landscape  of  sublime  desolation.  The  shining 
barrenness  of  these  rocks,  and  the  utter  nakedness 
of  that  vast  glittering  dome  which  hollows  the  heav- 
ens beyond  them,  cannot  be  conveyed  by  any  meta- 
phor to  a  reader  knowing  only  the  wood-crowned 
slopes  of  the  Alleghany  chain. 

Climbing  between  the  stunted  pines  and  giant 
blocks  along  the  stream's  immediate  margin, — get- 
ting glimpses  here  and  there  of  the  snowy  fretwork 
of  churned  water  which  laced  the  higher  rocks,  and 
the  black  whirls  which  spun  in  the  deep  pits  of  the 
roaring  bed  beneath  us, — we  came  at  last  to  the  base 
of  "  Yo-wi-ye,"  or  Nevada  Fall. 

This  is  the  most  voluminous,  and  next  to  Pi-wi-ack, 
perhaps,  the  most  beautiful  of  the  Yo-Semite  cata- 
racts. Its  beauty  is  partly  owing  to  the  surrounding 
rugged  grandeur  which  contrasts  it,  partly  to  its 
great  height  (eight  hundred  feet)  and  surpassing 
volume,  but  mainly  to  its  exquisite  and  unusual 
shape.  It  falls  from  a  precipice  the  highest  portion 
of  whose  face  is  .as  smoothly  perpendicular  as  the 
wall  overleapt  by  Pi-wi-ack ;  but  invisibly  beneath  its 
snowy  flood  a  ledge  slants  sideways  from  the  cliff 
about  a  hundred  feet  below  the  crown  of  the  fall,  and 
at  an  angle  of  about  thirty  degrees  from  the  plumb- 
line.  Over  this  ledge  the  water  is  deflected  upon  one 


444      THE  HEART  OF  THE  CONTINENT. 

side,  and  spread  like  a  half-open  fan  to  the  width  of 
nearly  two  hundred  feet. 

At  the  base  of  Yo-wi-ye  we  seem  standing  in  a  cul- 
de-sac  of  Nature's  grandest  labyrinth.  Look  where 
we  will,  impregnable  battlements  hem  us  in.  We 
gaze  at  the  sky  from  the  bottom  of  a  savage  gran- 
ite barathrum,  whence  there  is  no  escape  but  return 
through  the  chinks  and  over  the  crags  of  an  old- 
world  convulsion.  We  are  at  the  end  of  the  stu- 
pendous series  of  Yo-Semite  effects ;  eight  hundred 
feet  above  us,  could  we  climb  there,  we  should  find 
the  silent  causes  of  power.  There  lie  the  broad,  still 
pools  that  hold  the  reserved  affluence  of  the  snow- 
peaks  ;  thence  might  we  see,  glittering  like  diamond 
lances  in  the  sun,  the  eternal  snow-peaks  themselves. 
But  these  would  still  be  as  far  above  us  as  we  stood 
below  Yo-wi-ye  on  the  lowest  valley  bottom  whence 
we  came.  Even  from  Inspiration  Point,  where  our 
trail  first  struck  the  battlement,  we  could  see  far  be- 
yond the  Valley  to  the  rising  sun,  towering  mightily 
above  Tis-sa-ack  herself,  the  everlasting  snow  fore- 
head of  Castle  Kock,  his  crown's  serrated  edge  cut- 
ting the  sky  at  the  topmost  height  of  the  Sierra. 
We  had  spoken  of  reaching  him,  —  of  holding  con- 
verse with  the  King  of  all  the  Giants.  This  whole 
weary  way  have  we  toiled  since  then,  —  and  we  know 
better  now.  Have  we  endured  all  these  pains  only 
to  learn  still  deeper  life's  saddest  lesson,  —  "Climb 
forever,  and  there  is  still  an  Inaccessible  ?  " 

Wetting  our  faces  with  the  melted  treasure  of  'Na- 
ture's topmost  treasure-house,  Yo-wi-ye  answers  us, 
ere  we  turn  back  from  the  Yo-Semite's  last  precipice 
toward  the  haunts  of  men  :  — 

16  Ye  who  cannot  go  to  the  Highest,  lo,  the  Highest 
comes  down  to  you  !  " 


CHAPTER  X. 

OK  HORSEBACK  INTO  OREGON. 

AFTER  my  return  from  the  Yo-Semite  Valley,  I  re- 
mained in  San  Francisco,  or  its  delightful  neighbor- 
hood, making  short  excursions  around  and  across  the 
bay,  for  more  than  a  fortnight.  But  this  lotus-eating 
life  soon  palled.  I  burned  to  see  the  giant  Shasta, 
and  grew  thirsty  for  the  eternal  snows  of  the  Cascade 
Peaks  still  further  north.  So  much  of  a  horseback 
ride  to  the  Columbia  as  brought  us  into  Oregon  I 
here  propose  to  sketch  in  brief. 

With  the  exception  of  one  artist  companion  and 
myself,  our  party  had  become  sated  with  travel,  and 
gone  home.  One  glorious  September  day  we  two 
took  our  saddle-bags,  note-books,  and  color-boxes,  put 
our  horses  on  board  the  Sacramento  steamer,  and, 
without  other  baggage  or  company  of  any  sort,  set  out 
for  the  Columbia  River  and  Vancouver's  Island. 

At  Sacramento,  on  the  next  morning  after  leaving 
San  Francisco,  we  shifted  our  quarters  to  a  smaller 
and  light-draught  boat  which  was  to  take  us  up  the 
shallow  river  to  its  head  of  navigation.  This  arrange- 
ment was  a  great  economy  of  time.  The  country 
bordering  the  Upper  Sacramento,  for  two  hundred 
miles  from  the  Californian  capital,  is  level  and  com- 
paratively tame,  so  that  no  artistic  advantage  would 
have  resulted  from  following  the  bank  on  horseback. 
From  the  little  steamer  the  view  became  a  perpetual 


446       THE  HEAKT  OF  THE  CONTINENT. 

pleasure.  About  twenty  miles  above  Sacramento  we 
passed  the  mouth  of  Feather  River,  disgorging  coffee- 
colored  mud  from  the  innumerable  gold  diggings 
along  its  course,  and  came  into  lovely  blue  water, 
pure  as  the  cradling  snow-ridges  between  which  it 
issued.  The  immediate  margin  began  to  be  thickly 
wooded  with  overhanging  willows,  oaks,  and  syca- 
mores. These  were  alive  with  birds  of  every  aqua- 
tic description.  The  shag,  a  large  fowl  of  black  and 
dingy-white  plumage,  apparently  belonging  to  the 
cormorant  family,  peopled  every  dead  tree  with  a  live 
fruit  whose  weight  nearly  cracked  its  branches ;  every 
snag  projecting  from  the  river-bed  was  studded  with  a 
row  of  the  same  creatures  at  mathematically  equal 
intervals,  each  possessing  just  room  enough  for  his 
favorite  pastime  of  slowly  opening  his  wings  to  the 
utmost,  and  then  shutting  them  again  in  solemn 
rhythm,  like  a  pupil  of  Dr.  Dio  Lewis's,  or  a  patient 
in  the  Swedish  Movement-cure.  The  quiet  embayed 
pools  and  eddies  swarmed  with  ducks ;  every  sunny 
bar  or  level  beach  was  a  stalking-ground  for  stately 
cranes,  both  white  and  sand-hill ;  and  garrulous  crows 
kept  the  air  lively,  in  company  with  big  California 
magpies,  above  our  heads. 

The  course  of  the  river  grew  more  and  more  sinu- 
ous as  we  ascended ;  it  was  near  the  close  of  the  dry 
season,  and  there  remained  none  of  those  cut-offs 
which  economize  distance  during  the  prevalence  of 
the  rains.  The  Upper  Sacramento,  especially  when 
softened  and  rendered  illusory  by  such  a  full  moon  as 
it  was  our  good  fortune  to  travel  under,  perpetually 
recalls  that  loveliest  of  fairy  streams,  the  higher  St. 
John's,  in  Florida.  Nothing  out  of  dreams  is  more 
peacefully  enchanting  than  the  embowered  stretches 


ON  HORSEBACK  INTO  OREGON.  447 

of  clear  water  rippled  into  silver  arabesque  through 
a  long  moonlight  night,  or  the  hazy  vistas,  impur- 
pled  by  twilight,  into  which  one  swings  around  the 
short  curves  of  the  Sacramento,  amid  a  silence  that 
would  be  absolute  but  for  his  own  motion,  while  be- 
yond either  woody  margin  the  great  plains  spread 
away  untenanted,  a  waving  wilderness  of  wild  grass 
and  tule. 

Enjoying  the  far-niente  of  a  life  of  such  sweet  mono- 
tone all  the  more  because  it  was  such  a  contrast  to 
our  rough  riding,  past  and  future,  we  spent  two 
golden  days,  as  many  mezzotint  twilights,  and  a  pair 
of  silver  nights  upon  our  steamer.  On  the  morning 
of  the  third  day  we  reached  Tehama,  a  dead-and-alive 
little  settlement,  seven  hours'  journey  by  the  river- 
windings  from  Red  Bluffs,  the  head  of  navigation,  but 
only  ten  miles  by  land.  We  had  now  got  in  sight 
of  mountains ;  the  ethereal  blue  of  Lassen's  Buttes, 
rimmed  with  the  opal  of  perpetual  snow,  bounded  our 
view  northerly ;  and  as  every  motive  for  taking  to 
the  saddle  now  consisted  with  our  desire  for  econo- 
mizing time,  we  here  began  our  horseback  ride,  reach- 
ing Red  Bluffs  several  hours  before  the  steamer. 

Just  out  of  Tehama  we  struck  into  a  country  whose 
features  reminded  us  of  the  wooded  tracts  between 
Stockton  and  Mariposa.  After  two  days  of  tuU  and 
wild  grass,  Nature  grew  suddenly  ennobled  in  our 
eyes  by  thick  and  frequent  groves  of  the  royal  Cali- 
fornia oak.  There  was  a  feeling  of  luxury  in  the 
change,  which  none  can  know  who  have  not  had  a 
surfeit  of  boundless  plains.  We  bathed  our  hearts 
and  heads  in  shadow ;  the  fever  of  unbroken  light 
went  out  of  us ;  our  very  horses  shared  in  the  relief, 
and  gave  themselves  up  to  a  sweet  somnambulism 


448       THE  HEART  OF  THE  CONTINENT. 

with  which  we  had  too  much  sympathy  to  break  it  by 
spurs. 

Red  Bluffs  we  found  a  place  of  more  apparent  stir 
and  enterprise  than  any  Californian  town  we  had  seen, 
except  San  Francisco  and  Sacramento.  There  was 
quite  a  New  England  air  about  the  main  street,  —  so 
much  so  that  I  have  forgotten  to  call  it  Plaza,  as  I 
ought.  This  place  is  the  starting-point  for  all  Over- 
land supplies  sent  between  the  Sacramento  and  Port- 
land. Immense  wagons — shaped  like  the  Eastern 
charcoal-vehicle,  but  dwarfing  it  into  insignificance 
by  a  size  not  much  inferior  to  that  of  a  Mississippi 
flat-boat — are  perpetually  leaving  the  town,  drawn 
by  twelve  mules  or  horses,  and  in  charge  of  drivers 
whose  magnificent  isolation  has  individualized  them 
to  a  degree  not  exceeded  in  the  most  characteristic 
coachman  of  the  Weller  tribe,  or  the  typical  skipper 
of  the  Yankee  fishing-smack.  There  are  few  finer 
places  to  study  genre  than  the  California  ranches  fre- 
quented by  the  captains  of  these  "  prairie  schooners." 
At  convenient  distances  for  noon  halts  and  nightly 
turnings-in,  the  main  freighting-roads  of  the  State 
are  adorned  with  gigantic  caravanserais  offering  every 
accommodation  for  man  and  beast,  provided  with  ar- 
cades straddling  nearly  across  the  road,  under  which 
all  passing  wagoners  not  only  may,  but  must,  shelter 
themselves  from  the  rigors  of  rain  or  sun,  and  billeted 
along  their  fronts  with  seductive  descriptions  of  the 
paradise  within,  to  which  few  hearts  prove  obdurate 
after  being  softened  by  the  compulsory  magnanimity 
of  the  arcade. 

In  time  there  must  be  a  railroad  all  the  way  from 
Sacramento  to  Portland.  There  is  not  a  mile  of  the 
distance  between  Red  Bluffs  and  the  Oregon  metrop- 


ON  HORSEBACK  INTO   OREGON.  449 

oils  where  it  is  not  greatly  needed  already.  Nearly 
the  whole  intervening  region  is  exhaustlessly  fertile, 
—  one  of  the  finest  fruit  countries  in  the  world, — but 
so  entirely  without  an  economical  avenue  for  its  sup- 
plies or  outlet  for  its  productions,  that  many  of  the 
ranchmen  who  have  settled  in  it  feel  despondent  in 
the  midst  of  abundance,  and  leave  hundreds  of  mag- 
nificent orchard  acres  paved  with  rotting  apples  which 
would  command  a  "  bit "  a  pound  in  the  San  Fran- 
cisco market,  if  the  freight  did  not  more  than  con- 
sume the  profit,  and  the  length  of  the  journey  render 
the  fruit  unsalable. 

The  first  day  out  from  Tehama  we  made  a  distance 
of  nearly  forty  miles,  —  part  of  the  way  through  oak- 
groves  and  part  over  fine  breezy  plains,  with  the  no- 
ble mountain  chain  out  of  which  Lassen's  Buttes  rise 
into  the  perpetual-snow  region  continually  in  sight 
on  the  right  hand.  The  only  incident  that  occurred 
to  us  this  day,  in  any  other  key  than  that  of  pure 
sensuous  delight  in  the  fact  of  life  and  motion  under 
such  a  spotless  sky  and  in  an  air  that  was  such  breath- 
able elixir,  together  with  the  artistic  happiness  which 
flowed  down  on  us  from  the  noble  neighboring  moun- 
tains, was  our  discovery  early  in  the  afternoon  of  a 
cloud  of  dust  about  half  a  mile  ahead,  with  the  forms 
of  a  hundred  horsemen  dimly  looming  through  it. 
Such  a  sight  sets  an  old  Overlander  instinctively  fum- 
bling at  his  holsters ;  fresh  as  we  were  from  the  hor- 
rors of  the  desert,  we  felt  our  scalps  begin  to  detach 
themselves  slightly  from  the  cranium.  But  we  rode 
straight  ahead,  as  our  only  method  of  safety  was  to 
wear  a  bold  front,  if  the  cavaliers  were,  as  we  half 
suspected,  a  party  of  Humboldt  Indians,  who  had 
lately  taken  the  war-path  between  Lassen's  Buttes 

29 


450       THE  HEART  OF  THE  CONTINENT. 

and  the  coast.  I  don't  recollect  ever  having  been 
better  pleased  with  the  look  of  Uncle  Sam's  cavalry 
uniform  than  we  were,  upon  coming  up  with  the 
squad  and  finding  it  a  detachment  of  our  own  men 
sent  out  to  chastise  the  savages. 

That  night  we  reached  a  ranch  called  the  "  Ameri- 
can,"— and  certainly  its  title  was  none  too  ambitious, 
for  it  had  the  whole  horizon  to  itself,  and  to  all  ap- 
pearance might  have  been  the  only  house  on  the  Con- 
tinent. It  was  a  place  unvisited  of  fresh  meat  and 
ignorant  of  gridirons;  but  we  were  tired  enough, 
after  the  first  day  of  our  return  to  the  saddle,  to  sleep 
soundly  in  a  bed  of  tea-tray  dimensions,  and  under 
what  appeared  to  be  a  casual  selection  from  a  hamper 
of  soiled  pocket  handkerchiefs,  when  we  had  dis- 
patched the  first  of  that  long  series  of  suppers  on 
fried  pork  and  green  -  serpentine  saleratus-biscuits 
which  stretched  between  us  and  the  northern  edge 
of  Oregon. 

Though  the  month  was  September,  the  heat  in  the 
middle  of  the  day  upon  the  broad,  rolling  plains  we 
now  had  to  traverse  was  as  oppressive  as  an  Eastern 
July.  During  our  whole  horseback  journey,  therefore, 
we  made  it  our  custom  to  rise  as  soon  after  dawn  as 
possible,  breakfast,  travel  a  stage  of  fifteen  or  twenty 
miles,  make  a  long  midday  halt  in  some  pleasant 
nook,  and  push  on  twenty  miles  further  before  we 
unsaddled  for  the  night.  We  were  just  now  enabled 
to  make  this  second  stage  the  most  leisurely  and  the 
longest  of  the  two, — for  the  moon  was  still  in  all  the 
glory  of  its  California  brightness  and  plenitude,  and 
to  have  travelled  by  moonlight  between  the  Sacra- 
mento and  Mount  Shasta  is  one  of  the  prominent 
memories  of  a  life-time.  No  patriotic  attachment  is 


ON  HORSEBACK  INTO   OREGON.  451 

demanded  to  make  the  Californian  say  with  the  Irish- 
man, that  his  country's  full  moon  is  twice  as  large  and 
splendid  as  any  other's.  Phenomenally,  at  least,  the 
bare  facts  support  him. 

At  noon  of  the  day  on  which  we  left  the  American 
Ranch,  we  came  up  a  rugged  hill  into  the  settlement 
of  Shasta.  This  town  is  a  mining  depot  of  some  im- 
portance, chiefly  memorable  to  us  for  some  excellent 
pie,  made  out  of  the  California  apple-melon,  in  won- 
derful imitation  of  the  Eastern  green-apple  tart,  and 
a  charge  of  five  dollars  and  a  half  in  gold  made  by 
the  great  Californian  Express  Company  for  bringing 
a  color-box  (heavy  as  a  small  valise)  from  Red  Bluffs, 
whither  we  had  let  it  go  on  by  boat.  Why  this 
should  have  left  a  memorable  impression  on  our 
minds  it  would  be  hard  to  say ;  for,  although  the  de- 
mand was  somewhat  more  than  the  stage  employed 
by  the  Express  Company  would  have  charged  to  take 
either  one  of  us  the  same  distance,  accompanied  by  a 
heavy  trunk,  we  should  by  this  time  have  acquired 
sufficient  familiarity  with  extortion  from  the  Compa- 
ny's officials  to  have  paid  very  quietly  a  bill  of  fifty 
dollars  for  the  same  service,  and  then  dismissed  the 
trifling  matter  from  our  minds.  But  indignation  at 
swindles  is  sometimes  cumulative. 

At  the  town  of  Shasta  we  left  the  main  wagon  road, 
—  finding  that  it  passed  a  long  way  from  the  most 
important  point  on  our  itinerary,  the  base  of  Shasta 
Peak.  By  striking  across  the  country  six  miles  to  the 
small  settlement  of  Buckeye,  we  intersected  a  route 
little  travelled,  but  far  more  picturesque,  and  leading 
directly  to  the  great  object  of  our  longings.  On  the 
way  to  Buckeye  we  again  encountered  the  Sacra- 
mento, here  dwindled  to  a  narrow  mountain  stream, 


452       THE  HEART  OF  THE  CONTINENT. 

with  bold,  precipitous  banks  and  a  rock  bottom,  a 
smooth  and  deep,  but  rapid  current,  and  full  of  trout 
and  salmon.  We  crossed  it  on  a  rope-ferry,  and 
climbed  the  steeps  on  the  other  side,  but  did  not 
leave  it.  Thenceforward  to  Shasta  Peak  we  were 
never  out  of  its  neighborhood. 

By  this  detour  of  ours  we  came  into  a  country  bet- 
ter wooded  and  watered  than  any  through  which  we 
had  been  travelling.  When  the  sun  left  us,  we  found 
the  moonlight  so  seductive  that  we  pushed  on  late 
into  the  evening, — making  our  all-night  halt  at  a 
ranchman's  whose  name  had  been  given  us  by  some 
passing  native,  who  praised  his  accommodations  un- 
boundedly, but  proved  much  more  of  a  friend  to  him 
than  to  ourselves.  It  is  a  duty  to  visit  the  afflicted. 
It  is  a  misfortune,  not  a  crime,  to  have  a  wife  and  six 
children,  the  latter  all  under  twelve  years  of  age.  It 
is  a  still  greater  and  no  less  irresponsible  calamity  to 
have  them  all  prostrated  by  chills-and-fever,  yet  for- 
bidden to  yield  to  its  depressing  influence  by  the 
stimulus  of  several  million  healthy  fleas.  Ignorance, 
not  willfulness,  may  be  at  the  causal  bottom  of  a  batch 
of  bread  which  is  half  saleratus,  and  a  stew  of  ven- 
erable hens  which  is  one  third  feathers.  Nor  can  we 
regard  it  as  other  than  a  beneficent  arrangement  in 
the  grand  scheme  of  Nature's  laws,  that  a  pack  of 
noble  hounds  should  pass  the  hours  of  slumber  around 
our  humble  casement  in  the  free  indulgence  of  a  lib- 
erty distinctly  authorized  by  the  sacred  Watts,  as  fol- 
lows :  — 

"  Let  dogs  delight  to  bark,"  etc. 

Still,  I  think  public  opinion  will  sustain  me  in  the 
view  that  the  much  afflicted  family  were  not  agreea- 
ble to  pass  the  night  with. 


ON  HORSEBACK  INTO   OREGON.  453 

This  is  the  place  for  a  useful  financial  statement. 
Everything  on  our  present  trip  cost  a  dollar.  Bed  for 
one,  i.  e.  one's  share  of  a  bed  for  two, — supper, — 
each  horse's  forage, — breakfast, — every  several  item, 
a  dollar.  No  matter  how  afflicted  the  family,  sale- 
ratusy  the  bread,  loud  the  dogs, — nothing  was  fur- 
nished under  the  dollar.  When  people  happen  to 
have  enough  dollars,  this  becomes  comic.  It  reminded 
us  of  the  Catskill  Mountain  House,  where  in  specie 
times  everything  (after  hotel  bills)  was  twenty-five 
cents,  —  from  getting  a  waiter  to  look  at  you,  to  hav- 
ing the  Falls  tipped  up  for  you  and  spilt  over. 

The  day's  journey  between  the  afflicted  family  and 
Dog  Creek,  where  we  stopped  the  third  night,  is  such 
an  affluent  remembrance  of  beauty  that  I  feel  glad 
while  I  write  about  it.  We  started  under  circum- 
stances somewhat  tedious.  Nobody  was  going  toward 
Mount  Shasta  with  so  much  as  a  pack-mule.  The 
father  of  the  afflicted  family  labored  under  the  blight 
of  his  surroundings,  and  after  severe  thought  gave  up 
the  task  of  attempting  to  recall  when  anybody  had 
been  going  toward  Mount  Shasta.  It  was  also  too 
much  for  him  to  calculate  when  anybody  would  be 
going.  We  paid  him  his  dollars,  —  wished  that  his 
shadow  might  never  be  less,  which  it  couldn't  very 
well,  unless  the  ague  can  dance  on  a  mathematical 
line,  —  and  set  out  with  the  color -box  carried  alter- 
nately before  us  on  our  pommels.  It  had  been  our 
lete  noire  from  the  time  five  dollars  and  fifty  cents 
ransomed  it  at  Shasta.  We  now  began  to  wonder 
whether  the  Express  Company  also  had  carried  it  on 
a  pommel, — in  which  case  we  thought  we  could  for- 
give the  Express  Company.  The  morning  was  sultry, 
and  as  we  started  our  horses  forth  upon  a  walk, — for 


454       THE  HEAKT  OF  THE  CONTINENT. 

the  box  could  not  stand  jolting, — we  looked  forward 
to  a  tiresome  day. 

As  we  went  on.  Nature  seemed  determined  to  kiss 
us  out  of  the  sulks.  Just  as  we  broke  into  fresh 
grumbles,  which  we  wanted  to  indulge,  and  our  horses 
into  fresh  trots,  which  we  desired,  but  could  not  tol- 
erate, we  entered  some  lovely  glen,  musical  with  tink- 
ling springs,  its  walling  banks  tapestried  with  the 
richest  velvet  of  deep-green  grass,  brocaded  with 
spots  of  leaf-filtered  sunshine.  When  we  began  to 
swelter,  we  came  into  the  dense  shadow  of  great 
oaks,  or  caught  the  balmiest  wind  in  the  world 
through  aromatic  pine  and  cedar  vistas  along  the 
crown  of  some  lofty  ridge.  It  was  impossible  to  be 
vexed  with  the  step-mother,  Fate,  when  the  fingers 
of  our  mother,  Nature,  were  straying  through  our 
hair.  To  drive  away  the  last  elf  of  ill-humor,  and 
make  us  thenceforth  agree  to  regard  the  box  as  an 
ornamental  appendage  which  we  were  good-natured 
enough  to  let  each  other  enjoy  by  turns,  Pitt  Eiver, 
the  last  fork  of  the  Upper  Sacramento,  came  glancing 
into  our  landscape,  the  very  perfection  of  fluent  free- 
dom and  gladness.  Every  rod  of  the  journey  along 
its  west  bank  disclosed  a  new  picture.  The  misty 
blue  mountains  of  the  range  toward  Shasta  Peak 
formed  the  abiding  background  of  every  view.  Steep, 
fir-battlemented  banks  of  one  generic  form,  but  end- 
less variety  in  the  beauty  of  the  tree  forms  and 
groups  which  rose  from  their  glacis,  mile  after  mile, 
framed  in  some  new  loveliness  of  light-and-shadow 
flecked  bend,  deep  sepia-dark  pool,  singing  shallow,  or 
brawling  rapid  of  the  clear  stream.  Eagles  were  sail- 
ing, like  a  placid  thought  in  a  large  heart,  far  over 
our  heads  in  the  intimacy  of  a  spotless  sky;  the  great 


ON    HORSEBACK  INTO    OREGON.  455 

ground-squirrel  flashed  like  a  gray  gleam  over  the 
gnarled  mossy  roots  at  the  side  of  our  narrow  dug- 
way  ;  and  in  brilliant  blots  or  darting  shafts  of  Ma- 
genta fire,  we  recognized  among  the  tree-tops  that 
loveliest  bird  of  the  North  American  forest,  the  gr,eat 
crested  woodpecker.  Here  and  there,  to  introduce  a 
human  element,  came  cleared  spaces  by  the  river's 
brink,  where  pointed  wands  stood  impaling  flakes  of 
red  salmon-flesh,  —  the  open-air  curing-house  and  out- 
door store-room  of  the  Pitt  River  Indians.  Once  in 
the  course  of  the  day  we  lighted  on  a  picturesque 
ragged  hut,  where  the  purveyors  of  this  meat  were 
soaking  themselves  in  full  side-hill  sunlight,  —  where 
little  savages  of  every  degree  of  gauntness  in  their 
limbs,  ochriness  on  their  cheeks,  shockiness  in  their 
heads,  and  protuberance  in  their  abdomens,  were 
gorging  themselves  to  still  more  hideous  ventral 
embonpoint,  —  where  white  men,  lower  than  the  lowest 
Diggers  they  herded  with,  had  forgotten  the  little 
they  ever  knew  of  civilization,  and  stood  glaring  at 
us  like  half-sated  satyrs  as  we  passed.  Other  bits  of 
genre  hourly  came  into  the  picture  with  papoose- 
carrying  squaws  who  hunted  yew-berries  along  the 
road-side  fringe  of  woods,  youngsters  wearing  no  at- 
tire but  a  parti-colored  acorn  basket  of  deft  finger- 
work,  which  they  carried  loaded  on  their  shoulders, 
or  listlessly  trailed  empty  at  their  sides.  Dr.  Prichard 
has  some  hideous  pictures  of  Papuans  and  Australians; 
but  if  Ethnology  were  a  match  game,  we  could  give 
him  those  two  points,  and  beat  him  easily  by  playing 
a  few  of  the  Digger  women  whom  we  saw  that  day. 
They  reached  the  ugliness  of  aboriginal  specimens 
which  we  had  encountered  on  the  west  verge  of  the 
Goshoot  country;  and  if  any  earthly  pilgrimage,  short 


456      THE  HEART  OF  THE  CONTINENT. 

of  the  mountains  of  Nightmare,  can  reveal  their  rivals, 
I  should  like  to  get  into  a  prime  state  of  health,  and 
be  allowed  a  peep  at  them  through  a  spy-glass. 

The  condition  of  the  white  men  who  live  and  make 
alliances  with  these  poor  creatures  is  too  heart-sick- 
ening to  print.  The  law  that  governs  all  associations 
of  culture  with  barbarism,  where  the  latter  is  in  dy- 
namic excess,  holds  rigorously  true  in  California.  The 
higher  race  recollects  only  the  cultivated  evil  of  the 
state  whence  it  fell,  —  and  carrying  to  its  savage 
mates  subtler  means  of  accomplishing  vice  than  they 
knew  before,  presently  gives  rise  to  a  combination 
from  which  all  the  simplicity  of  the  low  race  is  elim- 
inated, and  into  which  enter  all  the  devils  of  mature 
civilization.  Nor  do  these  devils  come  accompanied 
by  a  single  grace  or  angel  which  softened  or  re- 
strained crime  in  the  developed  community.  The  at- 
tachment of  this  region's  older  settlers  for  their  sav- 
age comrades  is  something  incredible.  To  enjoy  their 
society,  they  cheerfully  embrace  a  life  as  impure,  un- 
cleanly, free  from  all  humanizing  influences,  as  that 
of  the  lowest  Digger  with  whom  they  consort.  Some- 
times a  strange  incongruous  romance,  like  moonlight 
on  a  puddle,  lights  up  these  mongrel  liaisons,  and  in- 
fuses into  them  a  burlesque  of  sentiment.  We  found 
one  old  hunter  whose  squaw  ran  away  from  him  into 
the  mountains  at  regular  six  months'  intervals,  and 
who  invariably  spent  hundreds  of  dollars  and  no  end 
to  hardships  in  hunting  her  up  and  restoring  her  to 
his  wigwam.  Another,  who  had  kept  an  Indian  se- 
raglio from  the  time  of  the  earliest  gold  discoveries, 
had  repeatedly  been  to  the  nearest  legal  officer  (two 
or  three  days'  journey  off),  and  besought  him,  without 
effect,  to  marry  him  to  one  of  his  squaws  in  Christian 


ON  HORSEBACK  INTO   OREGON.  457 

fashion.  It  certainly  did  seem  hard  that  the  poor  fel- 
low should  be  forbidden  to  make  the  only  reparation 
in  his  power  for  wrongs  of  twelve  years'  standing ; 
but  the  aesthetic,  naturally  enough  to  those  who  have 
seen  Diggers,  predominated  over  the  legal  and  moral 
in  the  judicial  mind,  and  he  was  finally  sent  away 
with  an  injunction  never  to  show  his  face  again  while 
"  this  court  continued  to  know  herself"  in  the  Shasta 
region. 

As  often  happens  in  the  discipline  of  human  life, 
the  thorn  in  the  flesh  was  withdrawn  as  soon  as  we 
had  learned  the  lesson  of  bearing  it  resignedly.  At  the 
last  crossing  of  the  Sacramento,  we  learned  from  the 
ferryman  that  a  providential  wagoner  was  just  ahead 
of  us,  going  certainly  to  Dog  Creek,  and  presumably, 
if  we  made  it  an  object,  all  the  way  to  Strawberry 
Valley,  at  the  foot  of  Shasta.  The  one  whose  turn  it 
was  not  to  carry  the  color-box  galloped  ahead,  and 
detained  the  wagoner  until  the  heavy  dragoon  had 
time  to  come  up.  With  a  deep  sigh  of  relief,  we 
stowed  our  box  in  the  "  prairie  schooner," —  made  a 
contract  to  have  it  packed  on  mule-back  from  Dog 
Creek  to  Shasta,  in  consideration  of  one  among  a 
gross  of  cheap  watches  which  we  had  brought  for 
trade  with  Indians  and  Trappers,  —  and,  relieving  our 
horses  by  the  first  canter  they  had  enjoyed  that  day, 
sped  away  with  the  deep  conviction  that  the  man 
who  first  called  chrome  and  white  lead  light  colors 
must  have  been  indulging  the  subtile  irony  of  a  dis- 
eased mind. 

The  seven  miles  of  our  journey  from  the  last  Sac- 
ramento crossing  to  Dog  Creek  were  even  grander  in 
their  scenery  than  our  morning  stage.  The  road  was 
a  dug-way  from  one  to  seven  hundred  feet  above  the 


458      THE  HEART  OF  THE  CONTINENT. 

base  of  a  winding  castellated  cliff,  here  and  there  cut 
in  rugged  sandstone,  but  often  both  walled  and  but- 
tressed with  steep  slopes  of  virgin  turf  kept  emerald 
by  innumerable  trickling  springs,  ice-cold  and  crystal- 
clear,  while  here  and  there  it  passed  through  woods 
as  dark  as  twilight.  The  slope  on  which  we  travelled 
formed  one  side  of  a  valley,  green  at  its  bottom  as  a 
New  England  meadow,  and  watered  by  a  picturesque 
affluent  of  the  Sacramento.  About  dark  we  came  to 
the  Dog  Creek  Ranch,  where  we  had  such  a  delicious 
supper  of  trout,  cooked  in  the  good  old  Green  Moun- 
tain fashion  with  an  Indian  meal  night-gown  on,  as 
made  us  "  forget  the  steps  already  trod,"  followed  by 
a  really  nice  pair  of  beds,  wherein  we  took  long  and 
ample  preparation  to  "  onward  urge  our  way  "  upon 
the  morrow. 

At  Dog  Creek  we  were  encamped  round  about  by 
the  largest  and  most  prosperous  Indian  tribe  that  we 
had  seen  on  our  trip.  Their  bows  and  arrows  were 
elegant  in  shape  and  color :  the  former  stained  in  a 
variety  of  patterns,  sometimes  carved,  and  wrapped 
as  well  as  strung  with  deer  sinews ;  the  latter  headed 
with  nicely  cut  pieces  of  a  black  obsidian  which 
abounds  in  the  vicinity  of  Shasta  Peak,  and  which  of 
itself  is  an  unerring  test  of  the  original  volcanic 
character  of  the  mountain.  The  quivers  of  this  Dog 
Creek  tribe  were  the  most  beautiful  preparations 
of  whole  mink,  otter,  and  sable  skins,  which  I  have 
seen  in  Indian  hands  anywhere  on  the  Continent. 
One  of  the  men  had  a  great  cap  made  out  of  an  en- 
tire grizzly  cub-skin,  the  claws  very  nicely  preserved 
and  dangling  behind,  while  the  head  curved  forward 
on  top  like  the  crest  of  an  old  Greek  helmet.  No- 
where did  we  find  neater,  more  ornamental  berry 


ON  HORSEBACK  INTO  OREGON.       459 

baskets,  or  more  carefully  worked  dishes  and  basins, 
than  those  woven  or  scooped  and  stained  by  this 
tribe.  In  wandering  through  their  stick-and-bark 
lodges,  we  found  some  tolerably  good-looking  men, 
far  above  the  average  brutality  of  the  Diggers,  with 
simple,  pleasant  expressions,  and  not  afraid  to  look 
one  in  the  eye.  In  one  lodge  crouched  a  man  and 
woman  who  without  exception  were  the  oldest-look- 
ing people  I  ever  saw.  The  husband  was  blind,  the 
wife  palsied ;  but  they  had  been  left  in  charge  of  a 
sprawling  family  of  their  fifth  generation,  which  haste 
and  the  warm  weather  forbade  our  counting.  I  gave 
the  old  lady  a  plug  of  tobacco,  and  watched,  as  she 
put  it  up  against  her  husband's  face,  to  see  which  of 
the  wrinkles  was  his  mouth ;  while,  on  her  filling  a 
pipe  and  smoking  with  grunts  of  evident  approba- 
tion directed  to  myself,  I  felt  pleasant  and  biblical, 
as  if  I  had  been  doing  a  good  turn  to  Methuselah's 
aunt. 

Only  forty  miles  more  stretched  between  us  and 
Shasta  Peak.  We  had  now  reached  an  elevation 
where  it  was  visible  to  us  in  its  full  majesty  from  the 
southwestern  side.  All  day,  after  our  leaving  Dog 
Creek,  its  giant  cone,  snow-wrapt  half  way  to  the 
base,  kept  surprising  us  through  clefts  in  the  sur- 
rounding crags  at  the  end  of  long  wooded  vistas,  or 
on  some  clear,  treeless  height  to  which  we  had  climbed, 
forgetting  the  mountain  in  our  heat  and  labor.  The 
country  about  us  was  becoming  wilder  and  wilder  : 
our  road  was  sometimes  a  mere  trail,  half  obliterated 
by  springs  or  traversing  rivulets.  We  now  rode  in 
the  woods  most  of  the  time,  and  found  the  shadow, 
stillness,  and  fragrance  all  delicious.  Beside  all  the 
springs  we  discovered  the  southernwood  of  our  East- 


460      THE  HEART  OF  THE  CONTINENT. 

ern  gardens  growing  wild,  its  strawberry-scented  and 
maroon-colored  buds  much  larger  than  those  of  our 
variety,  and,  though  a  trifle  less  intense  in  their  per- 
fume, still  sufficiently  sweet  to  make  every  nook  in 
which  they  grew  delicious  for  yards  around.  Here 
and  there  the  woods  showed  some  symptoms  of  au- 
tumnal change ;  there  were  hectic  spots  now  and  then 
on  the  maple  leaves  ;  but  nothing  approaching  in 
loveliness  the  forest  euthanasia  of  our  Eastern  fall 
appeared  until  we  had  crossed  the  boundary  of  Ore- 
gon. Shasta  Peak  is,  by  the  track,  nearly  eighty 
miles  from  that  line.  To-day,  just  as  the  sun  got 
down  to  the  tree-tops,  the  wooded  slope  suddenly  re- 
ceded from  our  left,  and  towered  into  one  of  those 
noble  crags  which  all  over  the  Continent  go  by  the 
name  of  "Castle  Kock,"  but  which  include  no  instance 
more  truly  deserving  the  name  than  this  bold  mass  of 
pinnacles  and  bastions,  bare  as  a  Yo-Semite  precipice, 
which  lifted  itself  apparently  about  a  thousand  feet 
above  the  green  glacis  of  the  slope,  stern  and  gray  at 
the  base,  but  etherealized  along  its  crest  and  battle- 
ment by  sunset  splendors  of  red  and  gold.  Simulta- 
neously with  the  Castle's  appearance,  our  leafy  covert 
parted  before  us,  and  disclosed  in  level  light,  which 
made  its  snow  opalescent,  and  bathed  its  vast,  rugged 
masses  of  stone  and  earth  in  one  inclusive  winy  glow, 
the  glorious  giant  of  California  which  had  drawn  us 
hither  through  the  wilderness.  The  height  of  Shasta 
is  variously  stated.  It  is  certainly  over  sixteen  thou- 
sand feet,  and  may  likely  be  nearer  eighteen  thousand. 
One  geological  survey  pronounces  it  the  highest 
mountain  in  the  Nevada  Range, — a  statement  taking 
into  account  Mount  Hood  and  the  other  great  peaks 
of  the  Cascade  system,  which  itself  is  but  an  Oregon 


ON  HORSEBACK  INTO   OREGON.  461 

reappearance  of  the  Sierra  Nevada.  The  distance 
from  which  Hood,  Saint  Helen's,  and  Eanier  could  be 
seen  with  the  naked  eye  led  us  afterward  to  regard 
this  statement  with  some  doubt ;  but  certainly  no 
peak  which  we  met  in  all  our  large  experience  of  the 
mountains  of  this  Continent  ever  compared  with 
Shasta  in  producing  the  effect  of  vast  height.  All 
the  others  which  we  have  seen,  with  the  exception  of 
Lander's  Peak,  whether  in  the  Rocky,  the  Nevada, 
the  Cascade,  or  "the  Pacific  Coast  Range,  have  suffered, 
visually,  from  modulation  through  their  gradually  as- 
cending tiers  of  foot-hills,  or  by  the  blending  of  their 
outlines  with  the  neighboring  peaks.  This  is  espe- 
cially so  with  Pike's  Peak,  which,  despite  its  being 
one  of  the  loftiest  mountains  in  America,  has  its  pro- 
portions most  dissatisfyingly  disguised,  in  all  but  a 
single  point  of  view  in  the  canon  of  the  Fontaine-qui- 
Bouille.  Shasta  is  a  mountain  without  mediations. 
It  sits  on  the  verge  of  a  plain,  broken  for  a  hundred 
miles  to  the  northward  only  by  pigmy  volcanic  cones 
heaped  around  extinct  solfataras.  We  approached  it 
in  the  only  direction  where  there  were  anything  like 
foot-hills  to  climb ;  but  even  upon  us,  on  reaching 
Strawberry  Valley,  at  its  southwestern  foot,  the  won- 
derful peak  broke  with  as  little  feeling  of  gradual 
approach  as  if  we  had  not  seen  its  head  glowing 
grander  and  more  real  out  of  the  blue  distance  re- 
peatedly during  the  last  three  days.  When  we  first 
saw  the  whole  of  it  distinctly,  it  seemed  to  make  no 
compromise  with  surrounding  plains  or  ridges,  but 
rose  in  naked  majesty,  alone  and  simple  from  the 
grass  of  our  valley  to  its  own  topmost  iridescent  ice. 
That  view  was  not  accorded  to  us  on  our  first  day 
out  from  Dog  Creek.  It  was  nearly  dark  when  we 


462       THE  HEART  OF  THE  CONTINENT. 

reached  the  Soda  Springs,  nine  miles  south  of  Straw- 
berry,— took  a  draught  of  the  most  delicious  mineral 
water  I  ever  drank,  more  piquant  than  Kissingen, 
and  cold  as  ice, — resisted  the  seductions  of  a  small, 
premature  boy  of  eight,  who  issued  from  the  Springs 
Ranch  to  dilate  agedly  on  the  tonic  properties  of  the 
water,  the  relaxing  virtues  of  the  beds,  and  the  ter- 
rors of  the  grim  forest  which  lay  for  us  in  the  black 
night  between  there  and  Strawberry, — and,  clapping 
spurs  to  our  tired  horses,  pushed  forward  with  stern 
determination  to  reach  Sisson's  that  evening. 

I  think  that  a  darker  night  than  presently  lapped 
us  among  the  thick  evergreens  was  never  travelled 
in.  There  were  some  streaks  of  blackness  a  mile 
long,  in  which,  literally,  I  could  not  see  my  horse's 
head.  But  we  had  learned  confidence  in  our  animals' 
sagacity,  and  walked  them,  cheerily  whistling  to  keep 
each  other  informed  of  our  whereabouts,  through  at 
least  six  miles  of  road  utterly  unknown  to  and  un- 
seen by  us.  It  was  what  Eastern  people  call  very 
"  poky ; "  but  the  language  addressed  to  us  by  the 
premature  boy  had  made  it  a  matter  of  personal  self- 
respect  for  us  to  get  to  Sisson's  that  night.  With  a 
certain  sense  of  triumph  over  that  unpleasant  and 
dissuasive  child,  we  saw  a  lantern  gleam  from  a  cor- 
ral about  ten  p.  M.,  and  had  our  interrogative  hail  of 
"  Sisson's  ?  "  answered  in  welcome  affirmative  by  Sis- 
son  himself. 

At  Sisson's,  or  exploring  with  him  in  the  neighbor- 
hood of  Shasta,  we  passed  one  of  the  most  delightful 
weeks  in  our  diary  of  travel  through  any  land.  His 
house  was  a  low,  two-story  building,  which  had  run 
like  a  verbena  in  all  directions  over  a  grassy  level, — 
putting  out  a  fresh  arm  at  every  new  suggestion  of 


ON  HORSEBACK  INTO   OREGON.  463 

domestic  convenience,  until  it  had  become  at  once 
the  most  amorphous  and  the  most  comfortable  dwell- 
ing in  the  California  wilds.  His  herds  were  populous 
and  prosperous ;  only  the  merest  pretence  of  fences 
broke  their  dream,  without  affecting  their  reality,  of 
limitless  pasture.  His  ranch  ostensibly  consisted  of 
a  few  hundred  acres ;  but  old  Shasta  was  his  only 
surveyor  of  landmarks,  and  his  base  of  supplies  was 
coextensive  with  the  base  of  the  mountain.  His 
family  consisted  of  an  admirably  energetic  and 
thrifty  wife,  who  had  accompanied  him  from  Illinois, 
where  he  used  to  be  a  school-master,  and  one  pretty 
little  baby-girl  indigenous  to  Strawberry  Valley.  The 
presence  of  this  mother  and  child  in  a  wilderness 
which  otherwise  howled  chiefly  with  rough  sporadic 
men  and  equally  rough  ubiquitous  bears,  was  a  per- 
petual delight  to  us,  so  far  from  our  domestic  com- 
munications. We  admired  Shasta  all  the  more  for 
looking  at  it  over  a  little,  gentle,  pink -and -white 
baby  who  lay  asleep  in  its  shadow,  like  a  cherub 
pressed  to  the  bosom  of  one  of  the  Djinn.  Escaping 
from  the  poetical  ground,  I  may  observe  that  be- 
tween the  chief  French  restaurant  of  Sacramento  City 
and  the  Dennison  House  in  Portland,  Oregon,  no  fam- 
ily whom  we  encountered  lived  in  such  wholesome 
and  homelike  luxury  as  Sisson's.  If  a  Society  for  the 
Diffusion  of  Gastronomic  Intelligence  among  the 
Heathen  is  ever  founded  in  California  and  Oregon 
(and  how  bitterly  such  a  philanthropic  enterprise  is 
needed  my  diary,  spotted  with  the  abominable  grease 
of  universal  frying,  bears  abundant  witness),  I  hope 
that  the  first  tract  which  it  publishes  will  be  a  biog- 
raphy of  Mrs.  Sisson;  the  first  point  insisted  on  by 
that  tract,  "  This  excellent  and  devoted  woman  used 


464       THE  HEART  OF  THE  CONTINENT. 

a  gridiron."  Bless  her !  how  she  could  broil  things! 
No  man  who  has  not  built  up  his  system  during  a 
long  expedition  with  brick  after  brick  of  pork  fried 
hard  in  its  own  ooze,  —  who  has  not  turned  all  his 
brain's  active  phosphorus  into  phosphate  of  soda  by 
alkali  biscuits  drawn  from  the  oven  in  the  hot-dough 
stage, — who  has  not  drunk  his  pease-coffee  "straight" 
at  the  tables  of  repeated  Pike  settlers  too  shiftless  to 
milk  one  of  their  fifty  kine,  —  who  has  not  slept 
myriads  in  a  bed  with  Cimex  lectularius  and  his  livelier 
congener  of  the  saltatory  habits,  —  can  imagine  what 
a  blissful  bay,  in  the  iron-bound  coast  of  bad  living, 
Sisson's  seemed  to  us  both  in  fruition  and  retrospec- 
tion. We  occasionally  had  beef,  when  Sisson,  or  some 
near  neighbor  ten  miles  off,  "  killed  a  critter/'  and 
distributed  it  around ;  excellent  mountain  mutton, 
flavorous  as  the  Welsh,  was  not  lacking  in  its  turn  ; 
but  the  great  stand-by  of  our  table  was  venison, — 
roast,  broiled,  made  into  pasties,  treated  with  every 
variety  of  preparation  save  an  oil-soak  in  the  pagan 
frying-pan  of  the  country.  As  for  chickens  and  eggs, 
it  u  snewe  in  Sisson's  house  "  of  that  sort  of  "  mete 
and  drinke,"  —  he  was  Chaucer's  Franklin  trans- 
ported to  Shasta.  Cream  flowed  in  upon  us  like  a 
river ;  potatoes  were  stewed  in  it ;  it  was  the  base  of 
chicken-sauce ;  the  sirupy  baked  pears,  whose  secret 
Mrs.  Sisson  had  inherited  from  some  dim  religious 
ancestor  in  the  New  England  past,  were  drowned  in 
it ;  and  we  took  a  glass  of  it  with  magical  shiny  rusk 
for  nine  o'clock  supper,  just  to  oil  our  joints  before 
we  relaxed  them  in  innocent  repose.  Our  rooms 
were  ample,  our  beds  luxurious,  our  surroundings  the 
grandest  within  Nature's  bestowal.  Our  capital  host 
and  hostess  became  our  personal  friends;  and  all 


ON  HORSEBACK  INTO   OREGON.  465 

that  they  did  for  us  was  so  heartily  kind  and  so 
cheerily  comfortable,  that,  if  we  were  asked  where, 
on  the  whole,  we  passed  the  pleasantest,  as  distinct 
from  the  grandest,  week  in  California,  I  think  we 
should  answer,  "  At  Sisson's,  in  Strawberry  Valley." 

Sisson  was,  without  exception,  the  best  rifle-shot  I 
ever  saw.  I  have  seen  him  bring  down  an  eagle 
soaring  as  high  as  I  could  see  it.  Before  a  target,  at 
any  distance  usual  for  such  experiments,  his  aim  was 
practically  unerring.  He  possessed,  in  addition,  two 
other  prime  qualities  of  a  first-class  woodsman,  — 
keen  sight  for  game  in  covert,  and  soft-footedness  in 
stealing  on  it,  —  to  a  degree  so  unequaled  in  my  ac- 
quaintance that  I  feel  justified  in  calling  him,  not 
only  the  best  shot,  but  the  best  hunter  I  ever  knew. 
We  spent  three  days  in  exploring,  sketching,  and 
deer-stalking  with  him,  during  all  which  time  he  was 
never  once  taken  by  surprise,  but  invariably  saw  his 
game  before  it  scented  him,  and  as  invariably  cracked 
it  over  before  ourselves,  or  another  old  huntsman  with 
us,  had  time  to  say,  "  Where  is  it  ? "  Our  main  ex- 
cursion led  us  about  a  dozen  miles  from  the  house  to 
a  lofty  ridge,  populous  with  game,  thickly  wooded 
with  evergreens,  and  on  its  bold  prominences  giving 
us  splendid  views  of  Shasta.  No  height  that  we 
could  attain  dwarfed  the  grandeur  of  the  mountain 
by  sinking  its  base,  and  no  lateral  variation  of  our 
standing-points  produced  any  change  in  its  shape. 
New  delicacies  of  rock  and  snow  net-work  came  out 
as  we  shifted,  and  the  sunlight  produced  different 
beauties  of  color  and  chiaroscuro  in  the  glacier-like 
cradles  of  its  upper  ice ;  but  so  far  as  height  and 
form  were  concerned,  it  seemed  to  have  no  more 
parallax  than  a  fixed  star.  This  fact  is  of  course 

30 


466       THE  HEART  OF  THE  CONTINENT. 

partly  due  to  its  being  a  nearly  regular  cone,  but 
much  of  it  depends  on  the  intrinsic  grandeur  of  a 
mountain  standing  lonely  on  the  plain,  full  sixty 
miles  in  cincture,  and  in  stature  nearly  eighteen 
thousand  feet. 

We  came  back  from  our  expedition  with  an  abun- 
dance of  venison,  a  number  of  interesting  color-studies, 
and  memories  of  California  scenery  surpassed  only 
by  the  Yo-Semite.  We  had  struggled  through  miles 
of  chaparral,  after  which  no  abatis  that  I  ever  saw  on 
the  Potomac  would  have  been  any  discouragement 
to  us,  provided  only  we  had  the  same  wonderful 
horses.  To  get  some  idea  of  this  peculiarly  Califor- 
nian  institution  as  we  encountered  it,  imagine  a  side- 
hill  which  would  have  given  the  best  horse  a  hard 
pull,  even  had  it  been  bare  of  undergrowth,  and  set 
this  hill  as  thick  as  it  will  hold  with  manzanita  and 
burr-oak :  the  former,  as  its  name  implies,  like  a 
little  apple-tree,  only  more  viciously  gnarled,  leath- 
ery, and  complicated  in  its  boughs  than  the  most  pic- 
turesque old  russet  in  a  New  England  orchard,  and 
ramifying  at  once  from  the  root  without  any  main 
trunk ;  the  latter,  an  oak-bush  of  the  same  general 
characteristics,  having  its  swarming  acorn-cups  cov- 
ered with  spikes  like  the  chestnut.  When  these  have 
interlocked  with  each  other  till  the  earth  is  invisible 
and  the  whole  tract  has  become  a  lattice  of  springes 
and  pitfalls,  push  a  horse  through  it  three  miles  up 
a  slope  of  forty -five  degrees,  the  breast-high  twigs 
scourging  him  at  every  step  ;  and  if  you  get  out,  as 
we  did,  without  a  fall  or  a  broken  leg  to  either  man 
or  beast,  you  will  not  only  have  acquired  a  just  idea 
of  the  California  chaparral,  but  an  admiration  for  the 
California  horse  which  will  last  you  to  your  dying 


ON  HORSEBACK  INTO   OREGON.  467 

day.  To  repay  us  for  this  struggle,  we  had  found  one 
lake  lying  in  a  picturesque  gorge,  only  twice  before 
visited  by  white  men ;  while  my  artist  comrade,  al- 
ways the  most  indefatigable  explorer  of  every  party 
we  were  in  together,  climbed  with  his  color-box  to 
still  another  lake,  of  which  he  was  the  first  discov- 
erer, and  whose  lovely  lineaments  he  preserved  in 
one  of  the  best  studies  of  our  trip.  Besides  these 
results  of  our  expedition,  we  brought  away  the  satis- 
faction of  having  leaped  our  horses  across  the  Sacra- 
mento River.  Where  it  flowed  at  the  bottom  of  one 
deep  ravine  we  had  to  traverse,  it  was  a  foot  deep  and 
ten  feet  wide.  The  twig  which  cracked  under  my 
horse's  hoof,  and  fell  into  the  stream  as  he  sprang 
over,  a  month  hence  might  be  dashing  about  in  the 
scud  under  the  foot  of  some  Pacific  whaler,  or,  still 
further  off  in  time,  drift  into  the  harbor  of  Hong 
Kong.  Rivers  always  seem  to  me  like  the  nerves  of 
Nature  :  there  is  no  conductor  of  thought  and  im- 
pression like  that  little  silver  thread  which  leads  out 
from  the  ganglion  of  a  deep  forest  spring,  to  spread, 
many  leagues  off,  upon  the  sensory  surface  of  the 
Oceanic  World.  In  an  earlier  chapter  I  spoke  of  the 
mighty  emotions  which  came  thronging  on  me  at  the 
heads  of  the  Platte  and  the  Colorado :  I  felt  them 
only  less  powerfully  when  my  horse  jumped  across 
the  Sacramento's  birthplace. 

After  a  good  day's  rest  at  Sisson's,  we  bade  the  cap- 
ital fellow  and  his  excellent  wife  a  good-by  which  had 
more  regret  in  it  than  we  ever  felt  before  for  com- 
rades of  a  single  week's  standing,  and  resumed  our 
northward  journey. 

The  country  continued  thickly  wooded  for  nearly 
twenty  miles  from  Strawberry,  and  the  forest  trail 


468       THE  HEART  OF  THE  CONTINENT. 

was  every  now  and  then  drowned  out  of  sight  by 
streams  rushing  from  the  snow  of  Shasta.  When  we 
emerged  from  the  timber,  we  found  ourselves  on  a 
plain  opening  widely  to  the  north  between  diverging 
ridges,  and  scattered  here  and  there  with  black  sconce 
like  the  slag  of  a  furnace.  In  some  places  an  attempt 
had  been  made  to  mend  the  road  with  lava;  and  as  it 
crunched  under  our  horses7  hoofs  we  could  almost 
imagine  ourselves  making  the  circuit  of  Vesuvius,  so 
evident  was  it  from  the  look  and  feel  of  things  that 
Pluto  has  at  no  very  remote  period  boiled  his  dinner- 
pot  on  the  hob  of  Shasta  Peak. 

The  day  was  fine,  —  the  air  more  bracing  than  we 
had  found  since  leaving  the  Yo-Semite.  Our  week 
of  comparative  rest  at  Sisson's  had  brought  our  horses 
into  splendid  condition  for  the  road  ;  both  we  and 
they  were  boiling  over  with  animal  spirits ;  and  it 
was  still  early  in  the  afternoon  when  we  rode  the 
fortieth  mile  of  our  way  into  Yreka,  on  the  full  gal- 
lop. I  need  not  say  that  we  had  made  other  arrange- 
ments than  our  pommels  for  the  transportation  of  our 
heavy  baggage  to  the  next  place  where  we  should 
need  it.  Sisson,  always  full  of  resources,  had  taken 
good  care  of  that  for  us  both. 

Neither  to  the  traveller  nor  the  raconteur  is  Yreka 
a  place  to  linger  in.  It  consists  of  one  long  street, 
with  a  tolerable  brick  hotel  at  one  end,  and  a  kennel 
of  straggling  houses  swarming  with  Chinese  of  ill 
odor  and  worse  repute  at  the  other,  —  intersected  by 
half  a  dozen  lanes,  devoted  principally  to  stables, 
gambling-shops,  and  liquor  dens.  I  only  quote  the 
language  of  all  the  inhabitants  whom  I  conversed 
with,  when  I  say  that  such  glory  as  it  once  held 
among  the  northern  mining-towns  has  entirely  de- 


ON  HORSEBACK  INTO  OREGON.  469 

parted  from  it.  The  discovery  of  the  Boise*  and  John- 
Day  mines  to  the  far  northeast  has  attracted  away  all 
the  principal  gold  seekers  who  once  dug  and  panned 
in  the  vicinity ;  and  if  there  ever  was  a  place  which 
had  nothing  intrinsic  to  fall  back  upon,  it  is  Yreka. 
We  were  glad  to  leave  it  after  one  night's  rest. 

The  day  we  evacuated  it  was  atmospherically  the 
most  glorious  that  we  enjoyed  upon  our  whole  trip. 
The  air  had  a  golden  look,  as  if  it  not  merely  trans- 
mitted, but  were  stained  with  sunshine.  The  sky  was 
spotless,  the  weather  as  warm  as  our  mid-June,  but 
without  the  least  languor.  The  landscape  was  that 
broad  plain  I  have  mentioned,  with  Shasta  on  its 
verge,  intersected  by  low  rolling  ridges,  and  broken 
by  the  cones  of  extinct  volcanic  spiracles,  sometimes 
grouped,  but  oftener  isolated.  Shasta  himself  seemed 
to  have  gained  rather  than  lost  in  majesty  by  our 
forty  and  now  steadily  increasing  miles  of  distance. 
Either  from  atmospheric  effect,  or  because  we  now 
saw  a  new  and  more  irregular  portion  of  his  crown, 
the  snow  upon  it  became  opalescent  to  a  degree  which 
I  have  never  seen  surpassed  by  any  such  effect.  The 
light  reflected  from  it  seemed  to  gleam  like  a  soft- 
ened flame  deep  down  beneath  some  pearly  medium, 
rather  than  any  rebound  of  sunlight  from  a  surface. 

The  rugged  hillocks  between  which  we  rode  were 
bare  and  craggy  at  their  tops,  but  all  about  their 
base,  and  far  down  into  the  plain,  grew  abundance  of 
a  plant  wonderfully  like  the  heather  in  its  size  as  well 
as  in  the  shape  and  color  of  its  blossoms.  Broad,  ex- 
quisitely claret-tinted  streaks  and  patches  of  this 
lovely  thing  softened  the  landscape  everywhere.  We 
seemed  to  be  travelling  in  a  beautiful  confusion  of 
Nature,  where  the  Scottish  Highlands  had  got  to- 


470       THE  HEART  OF  THE  CONTINENT. 

gether  under  a  California  sky  with  the  Roman  Cam- 
pagna.  Throughout  this  sweet  desolation  reigned  a 
visible  and  audible  quiet  which  made  our  horses'  hoofs 
seem  noisy.  Between  Yreka  and  the  Klamath  River 
—  a  narrow,  rapid  stream,  recalling  some  portions  of 
the  Housatonic,  which  we  intersected  about  noon,  and 
along  which  we  rode  for  an  hour  —  we  met  only  two 
or  three  silent  horsemen  and  as  many  eremetic  wood- 
choppers. 

Turning  north  from  the  Klamath,  we  dined  at  a 
miserable  settlement  called  Cottonwood,  around  which 
for  miles  in  every  direction  departed  gold  hunters  had 
burrowed  till  the  ground  was  a  honey-comb,  or  more 
properly  a  last  year's  hornets'  nest,  since  there  was 
no  sign  of  honey  in  the  cells,  and,  from  what  a  most 
dejected  native  told  us  of  the  yield,  never  had  been 
any  to  speak  of. 

Leaving  dreary  Cottonwood  with  even  greater 
pleasure  than  we  had  felt  in  abandoning  Yreka,  we 
began  ascending  the  slope  toward  the  Oregon  line. 
At  every  mile  the  country  grew  lovelier.  California 
seemed  determined  to  make  our  last  impressions  of 
her  tender.  The  bare,  brown  rocks  became  densely 
wooded  with  oaks  and  evergreens.  Late  in  the  after- 
noon we  came  to  broad  meadows  of  such  refreshing 
deep-green  grass  as  we  had  not  seen  before  since  we 
left  the  rich  farming  lands  of  the  Atlantic  side,  and 
the  level  golden  bars  which  lay  on  them  between 
forest  edges  made  us  homesick  with  memories  of 
peaceful  Eastern  lawns  at  sunset.  After  crossing  sev- 
eral miles  of  such  meadows,  and  the  quiet  brooks 
which  ran  through  them,  we  traversed  a  number  of 
strange  low  ridges,  undulating  in  systematic  rhythm, 
like  a  mountain-chain  making  a  series  of  false  starts 


ON   HORSEBACK  INTO   OREGON.  471 

prior  to  the  word  "go,"  reached  the  true  base  of  the 
Siskiyou  Mountains,  and  began  our  final  climb  out  of 
the  Golden  State. 

The  road  was  very  uneven,  rocky,  cut  up  by  rivu- 
lets from  the  higher  ridges,  and  in  most  places  only  a 
rude  dug-way,  with  a  rocky  wall  on  one  side,  and  a 
butment  of  thickly  wooded  debris  steeply  descending 
to  a  black,  brawling  torrent  on  the  other.  But  we 
did  not  trouble  ourselves  with  the  road.  The  wild 
beauty  of  the  forest  absorbed  us  on  either  hand ;  and 
we  were  astonished  at  the  rapid  transition  which  the 
leaves  suddenly  took  on,  from  the  dry,  burnt  look, 
characteristic  of  the  end  of  the  California  dry  season, 
to  autumnal  splendors  of  red  and  yellow,  hardly  ri- 
valed by  the  numberless  varieties  of  tint  in  our  own 
October  woods.  Just  as  the  sun  sank  out  of  sight, 
we  reached  a  lofty  commanding  ridge,  stopped  to  rest, 
turned  around  and  saw  Shasta  looming  grandly  up 
out  of  the  valley  twilight,  his  icy  forehead  all  one 
mass  of  gold  and  ruby  fire.  It  was  one  of  the  grand- 
est mountain  sights  I  ever  looked  on :  such  a  purple 
hush  over  the  vast  level  below  us ;  such  colossal 
broad  shadows  on  the  giant's  foot ;  such  a  wonderful 
flame  on  that  noble,  solitary  head,  which,  but  for  the 
unbroken  outlines  leading  up  to  it  out  of  the  twi- 
light, might  have  been  only  some  loftier  cloud  catch- 
ing good-night  sun-glimpses  at  half-way  up  the  firma- 
ment. Good-night  from  Shasta !  Alas,  not  only  to 
the  sun,  but  to  us !  We  felt  a  real  pang,  as  we  con- 
fessed to  ourselves  that  we  were  now  looking  upon 
this  noblest  and  serenest,  if  not  loftiest  of  all  the 
mountains  in  our  travel,  for  the  last  time  in  years,  — 
perhaps  the  last  forever.  We  gazed  wistfully  till  ad- 


472      THE  HEART  OF  THE  CONTINENT. 

monished  by  the  deepening  twilight ;  then,  as  Shasta 
became  a  shadow  on  the  horizon,  plunged  silently 
into  the  dense  woods  again,  climbed  to  the  Siskiyou 
summit,  and,  descending  through  almost  jetty  dark- 
ness, were  in  Oregon. 


CHAPTER  XI. 

ON  THE  COLUMBIA  KTVE&. 

I  HAVE  never  known,  nor  seen  any  person  who  did 
know,  why  Portland,  the  metropolis  of  Oregon,  was 
founded  on  the  Willamette  River.  I  am  unaware  why 
the  accent  is  on  the  penult,  and  not  on  the  ultimate 
of  Willamette.  These  thoughts  perplexed  me  more 
than  a  well  man  would  have  suffered  them,  all  the 
way  from  the  Callapooya  Mountains  to  Portland.  I 
had  been  laid  up  in  the  backwoods  of  Oregon,  in  a 
district  known  as  the  Long-Tom  Country  —  (and  cer- 
tainly a  longer  or  more  tedious  Tom  never  existed 
since  the  days  of  him  additionally  hight  Aquinas), — 
by  a  violent  attack  of  pneumonia,  which  came  near 
terminating  my  earthly  with  my  Oregon  pilgrimage. 
I  had  been  saved  by  the  indefatigable  nursing  of  the 
friend  I  travelled  with,  —  by  wet  compresses,  and  the 
impossibility  of  sending  for  any  doctor  in  the  region. 
I  had  lived  to  pay  San  Francisco  hotel  prices  for 
squatter-cabin  accommodations  in  the  rural  residence 
of  an  Oregon  landholder,  whose  tender  mercies  I  fell 
into  from  my  saddle  when  the  disease  had  reached  its 
height,  and  who  explained  his  unusual  charges  on  the 
ground  that  his  wife  had  felt  for  me  like  a  mother. 
In  the  Long-Tom  Country  maternal  tenderness  is  a 
highly  estimated  virtue.  It  cost  my  comrade  and 
myself  sixty  dollars,  besides  the  reasonable  charge 
for  five  days'  board  and  attendance  to  a  man  who  ate 


474      THE  HEART  OF  THE  CONTINENT. 

nothing  and  was  not  waited  on,  with  the  same  amount 
against  his  well  companion.  We  had  suffered  enough 
extortion  before  that  to  exhaust  all  our  native  grum- 
blery.  So  we  paid  the  bill,  and  entered  on  our  note- 
books the  following 

Mem.  "  In  stopping  with  anybody  in  the  Long-Tom 
Country,  make  a  special  contract  for  maternal  tender- 
ness, as  it  will  invariably  be  included  in  the  bill." 

I  had  ridden  on  a  straw  bed  in  the  wagon  of  the 
man  whose  wife  cultivated  the  maternal  virtues,  until 
I  was  once  more  able  to  go  along  by  myself,  —  pay- 
ing, you  may  be  sure,  maternal-virtue  fare  for  my 
carriage.  During  the  period  that  I  jolted  on  the 
straw,  I  diversified  the  intervals  between  pulmonary 
spasms  with  a  sick  glance  at  the  pages  of  Bulwer's 
"  Devereux  "  and  Lever's  "  Day's  Kide."  The  nature 
of  these  works  did  not  fail*  to  attract  the  attention  of 
my  driver.  It  aroused  in  him  serious  concern  for  my 
spiritual  welfare.  He  addressed  me  with  gentle  firm- 
ness :  — 

"  D'ye  think  it's  exackly  the  way  for  an  immortal 
creatur'  to  be  spendin'  his  time,  to  read  them  novels?" 

"  Why  is  it  particularly  out  of  the  way  for  an  im- 
mortal creature  ?  " 

"Because  his  higher  enterests  don't  give  him  no 
time  for  sich  follies." 

"How  can  an  immortal  creature  be  pressed  for 
time?" 

"  Wai,  you'll  find  out  some  day.    G'lang,  Jennie." 

I  thought  I  had  left  this  excellent  man  in  a  meta- 
physical bog.  But  he  had  not  discharged  his  duty, 
so  he  scrambled  out  and  took  new  ground. 

"  Now  say,  —  d'  you  think  it's  exackly  a  Christian 
way  of  spendin'  time,  yourself?" 


ON  THE   COLUMBIA  RIVER.  475 

"I  know  a  worse  way." 

"Eh?    What's  that?" 

"  In  the  house  of  a  Long-Tom  settler  who  charges 
five  dollars  a  day  extra  because  his  wife  feels  like  a 
mother." 

He  did  not  continue  the  conversation.  I  myself 
did  not  close  it  in  anger,  but  solely  to  avoid  an  extra 
charge,  which  in  the  light  of  experience  seemed  im- 
minent, for  concern  about  my  spiritual  welfare.  On 
the  maternal  -  tenderness  scale  of  prices,  an  indul- 
gence in  this  luxury  would  have  cleaned  me  out  be- 
fore I  effected  junction  with  my  drawers  of  exchange, 
and  I  was  discourteous  as  a  matter  of  economy. 

We  had  enjoyed,  from  the  summit  of  a  hill  twenty 
miles  south  of  Salem,  one  of  the  most  magnificent 
views  in  all  earthly  scenery.  Within  a  single  sweep 
of  vision  were  seven  snow-peaks,  —  the  Three  Sisters, 
Mount  Jefferson,  Mount  Hood,  Mount  Adams,  and 
Mount  St.  Helen's, — with  the  dim  suggestion  of  an 
eighth  colossal  mass,  which  might  be  Kainier.  All 
these  rose  along  an  arc  of  not  quite  half  the  horizon, 
measured  between  ten  and  eighteen  thousand  feet  in 
height,  were  nearly  conical,  and  absolutely  covered 
with  snow  from  base  to  pinnacle.  The  Three  Sisters, 
a  triplet  of  sharp,  close-set  needles,  and  the  grand 
masses  of  Hood  and  Jefferson,  showed  mountainesque 
and  earthly ;  it  was  at  least  possible  to  imagine  them 
of  us,  and  anchored  to  the  ground  we  trod  on.  Not 
so  with  the  others.  They  were  beautiful,  yet  awful 
ghosts,  —  spirits  of  dead  mountains  buried  in  old- 
world  cataclysms,  returning  to  make,  on  the  brilliant 
azure  of  noonday,  blots  of  still  more  brilliant  white. 
I  cannot  express  their  vague,  yet  vast  and  intense 
splendor  by  any  other  word  than  incandescence.  It 


476       THE  HEART  OF  THE  CONTINENT. 

was  as  if  the  sky  had  suddenly  grown  white-hot  in 
patches.  When  we  first  looked,  we  thought  St.  Hel- 
en's an  illusion,  —  an  aurora,  or  a  purer  kind  of 
cloud.  Presently  we  detected  the  luminous  chromatic 
border,  —  a  band  of  refracted  light  with  a  predomi- 
nant orange  tint,  which  outlines  the  higher  snow- 
peaks  seen  at  long  range,  —  traced  it  down,  and 
grasped  the  entire  conception  of  the  mighty  cone. 
No  man  of  enthusiasm,  who  reflects  what  this  whole 
sight  must  have  been,  will  wonder  that  my  friend  and 
I  clasped  each  other's  hands  before  it,  and  thanked 
God  we  had  lived  to  this  day. 

We  had  followed  down  the  beautiful  valley  of  the 
Willamette  to  Portland,  finding  everywhere  glimpses 
of  autumnal  scenery  as  delicious  as  the  hills  and 
meadows  of  the  Housatonic.  Putting  up  in  Portland 
at  the  Dennison  House,  we  found  the  comforts  of  civil- 
ization for  the  first  time  since  leaving  Sisson's,  and  a 
great  many  kind  friends  warmly  interested  in  further- 
ing our  enterprise.  I  have  said  that  I  do  not  know 
why  Portland  was  built  on  the  Willamette.  The  point 
of  the  promontory  between  the  Willamette  and  the 
Columbia  seems  the  proper  place  for  the  chief  com- 
mercial city  of  the  State ;  and  Portland  is  a  dozen 
miles  south  of  this,  up  the  tributary  stream.  But 
Portland  does  very  well  as  it  is, —  growing  rapidly  in 
business  importance,  and  destined,  when  the  proper 
railway  communications  are  established,  to  be  a  sort 
of  Glasgow  to  the  London  of  San  Francisco.  When 
we  were  there,  there  was  crying  need  of  a  telegraph 
to  the  latter  place.  That  need  has  now  been  sup- 
plied, and  the  construction  of  the  no  less  desirable 
railroad  must  follow  speedily.  The  country  between 
Shasta  Peak  and  Salem  is  at  present  virtually  without 


ON  THE   COLUMBIA  RIVER.  477 

an  outlet  to  market.  No  richer  fruit  and  grain  region 
exists  on  the  Pacific  slope  of  the  Continent.  No  one 
who  has  not  travelled  through  it  can  imagine  the  ex- 
haustless  fertility  which  will  be  stimulated,  and  the 
results  which  will  be  brought  forth,  when  a  continu- 
ous line  of  railroad  unites  Sacramento,  or  even  Te- 
hama,  with  the  metropolis  of  Oregon. 

Among  the  friends  who  welcomed  us  to  Portland 
were  Messrs.  Ainsworth  arid  Thompson,  of  the  Ore- 
gon Steamship  Company.  By  their  courtesy  we  were 
afforded  a  trip  up  the  Columbia  River,  in  the  pleas- 
antest  quarters  and  under  the  most  favorable  circum- 
stances. 

We  left  Portland  the  evening  before  their  steamer 
sailed,  taking  a  boat  belonging  to  a  different  line, 
that  we  might  pass  a  night  at  Fort  Vancouver,  and 
board  the  Company's  boat  when  it  touched  at  that 
place  the  next  morning.  We  recognized  our  return 
from  rudimentary  society  to  civilized  surroundings 
and  a  cultivated  interest  in  art  and  literature,  when 
the  captain  of  the  little  steamer  Vancouver  refused 
to  let  either  of  us  buy  a  ticket,  because  he  had  seen 
my  companion  on  the  upper  deck  at  work  with  his 
sketch-book,  and  me  by  his  side  engaged  with  my 
journal. 

The  banks  of  the  Willamette  below  Portland  are 
low,  and  cut  up  by  small  tributaries  or  communi- 
cating lagoons,  which  divide  them  into  islands.  The 
largest  of  these,  measuring  its  longest  border,  has  an 
extent  of  twenty  miles,  and  is  called  Sauveur's.  An- 
other, called  "  Nigger  Tom's,"  was  famous  as  the  seign- 
iory of  a  blind  African  nobleman  so  named,  living 
in  great  affluence  of  salmon  and  whiskey  with  three 
or  four  devoted  Indian  wives,  who  had  with  equal  fer- 


478      THE  HEART  OF  THE  CONTINENT. 

vor  embraced  the  doctrine  of  Mormonism  and  the 
profession  of  day's  washing  to  keep  their  liege  in  lux- 
ury due  his  rank.  The  land  along  the  shore  of  the 
river  was  usually  well  timbered,  and  in  the  level 
openings  looked  as  fertile  as  might  be  expected  of  an 
alluvial  first  bottom  frequently  overflowed.  At  its 
junction  with  the  Columbia  the  Willamette  is  about 
three  quarters  of  a  mile  in  width,  and  the  Columbia 
may  be  half  a  mile  wider,  though  at  first  sight  the 
difference  seems  more  than  that  from  the  tributary's 
entering  the  main  river  at  an  acute  angle,  and  giv- 
ing a  diagonal  view  to  the  opposite  shore.  Before 
we  passed  into  the  Columbia,  we  had  from  the  upper 
deck  a  magnificent  glimpse  to  the  eastward  of  Hood's 
spotless  snow-cone  rosied  with  the  reflection  of  the 
dying  sunset.  Short  and  hurried  as  it  was,  this  view 
of  Mount  Hood  was  unsurpassed  for  beauty  by  any 
which  we  got  in  its  close  vicinity  and  afterward, 
though  nearness  added  rugged  grandeur  to  the  sight. 
Six  miles'  sail  between  low  and  uninteresting  shores 
brought  us  from  the  mouth  of  the  Willamette  to  Fort 
Vancouver,  on  the  Washington  Territory  side  of  the 
river.  Here  we  debarked  for  the  night,  making  our 
way  in  an  ambulance  sent  for  us  from  the  post,  a 
distance  of  two  minutes'  ride,  to  the  quarters  of  Gen- 
eral Alvord,  the  commandant.  Under  his  hospitable 
roof  we  experienced,  for  the  first  time  in  several 
months  and  many  hundred  miles,  the  delicious  sensa- 
tion of  a  family  dinner,  with  a  refined  lady  at  the 
head  of  the  table  and  well-bred  children  about  the 
sides.  A  very  interesting  guest  of  General  Alvord's 
was  Major  Lugenbeel,  who  had  spent  his  life  in  the 
topographical  service  of  the  United  States,  and  com- 
bined the  culture  of  a  student  with  an  amount  of 


ON  THE   COLUMBIA  RIVER.  479 

information  concerning  the  wildest  portions  of  our 
Continent  which  I  have  never  seen  surpassed  nor 
heard  communicated  in  style  more  fascinating.  He 
had  lately  come  from  the  John  Day,  Boise*,  and  Snake 
River  Mines,  where  the  Government  was  surveying 
routes  of  emigration,  and  pronounced  the  wealth  of 
the  region  exhaustless. 

After  a  pleasant  evening  and  a  good  night's  rest, 
we  took  the  Oregon  Company's  steamer,  "Wilson  G. 
Hunt,"  and  proceeded  up  the  river,  leaving  Fort  Van- 
couver about  seven  A.  M.  To  our  surprise,  the  "  Hunt" 
proved  an  old  acquaintance.  She  will  be  remembered 
by  most  people  who  during  the  last  twelve  years 
have  been  familiar  with  the  steamers  hailing  from 
New  York  Bay.  Though  originally  built  for  river 
service  such  as  now  employs  her,  she  came  around 
from  the  Hudson  to  the  Columbia  by  way  of  Cape 
Horn.  By  lessening  her  top-hamper  and  getting  new 
stanchions  for  her  perilous  voyage,  she  performed  it 
without  accident. 

Such  a  vivid  souvenir  of  the  Hudson  reminded  me 
of  an  assertion  I  had  often  heard,  that  the  Columbia 
resembles  it.  There  is  some  ground  for  the  compari- 
son. Each  of  the  rivers  breaks  through  a  noble 
mountain-system  in  its  passage  to  the  sea,  and  the 
walls  of  its  avenue  are  correspondingly  grand.  In 
point  of  variety  the  banks  of  the  Hudson  far  surpass 
those  of  the  Columbia,  —  trap,  sandstone,  granite, 
limestone,  and  slate  succeeding  each  other  with  a 
rapidity  which  presents  ever  new  outlines  to  the  eye 
of  the  tourist.  The  scenery  of  the  Columbia,  between 
Fort  Vancouver  and  the  Dalles,  is  a  sublime  mono- 
tone. Its  banks  are  basaltic  crags  or  mist -wrapt 
domes,  averaging  below  the  cataract  from  twelve  to 


480       THE  HEART  OF  THE  CONTINENT. 

fifteen  hundred  feet  in  height,  and  thence  decreasing 
to  the  Dalles,  where  the  escarpments,  washed  by  the 
river,  are  low  trap  bluffs  on  a  level  with  the  steamer's 
walking-beam,  and  the  mountains  have  retired,  bare 
and  brown,  like  those  of  the  great  continental  basin 
farther  south,  toward  Mount  Hood  in  that  direction, 
and  Mount  Adams  on  the  north.  If  the  Palisades 
were  quintupled  in  height,  domed  instead  of  level  on 
their  upper  surfaces,  extended  up  the  whole  naviga- 
ble course  of  the  Hudson,  and  were  thickly  clad  with 
evergreens  wherever  they  were  not  absolutely  pre- 
cipitous, the  Hudson  would  much  more  closely  re- 
semble the  Columbia. 

I  was  reminded  of  another  Eastern  river,  which  I 
had  never  heard  mentioned  in  the  same  company. 
As  we  ascended  toward  the  cataract,  the  Columbia 
water  assumed  a  green  tint  as  deep  and  positive  as 
that  of  the  Niagara  between  the  falls  and  Lake  On- 
tario. Save  that  its  surface  was  not  so  perturbed 
with  eddies  and  marbled  with  foam,  it  resembled  the 
Niagara  perfectly. 

We  boarded  the  "  Hunt "  in  a  dense  fog,  and  went 
immediately  to  breakfast.  With  our  last  cup  of  coffee 
the  fog  cleared  away  and  showed  us  a  sunny  vista  up 
the  river,  bordered  by  the  columnar  and  mural  trap 
formations  above  mentioned,  with  an  occasional  bold 
promontory  jutting  out  beyond  the  general  face  of 
the  precipice,  its  shaggy  fell  of  pines  and  firs  all 
aflood  with  sunshine  to  the  very  crown.  The  finest 
of  these  promontories  was  called  Cape  Horn,  the 
river  bending  around  it  to  the  northeast.  The  chan- 
nel kept  mid-stream  with  considerable  uniformity,  — 
but  now  and  then,  as  in  the  highland  region  of  the 
Hudson,  made  a  d&tour  to  avoid  some  bare,  rocky  isl- 


ON  THE   COLUMBIA  KIVER.  481 

and.  Several  of  these  islands  were  quite  columnar, 
—  being  evidently  the  emerged  capitals  of  basaltic 
prisms,  like  the  other  uplifts  on  the  banks.  A  fine 
instance  of  this  formation  was  the  stately  and  per- 
pendicular "  Rooster  Rock  "  on  the  Oregon  side,  but 
not  far  from  Cape  Horn.  Still  another  was  called 
"  Lone  Rock/'  and  rose  from  the  middle  of  the  river. 
These  came  upon  our  view  within  the  first  hour  after 
breakfast,  in  company  with  a  slender,  but  graceful 
stream,  which  fell  into  the  river  over  a  sheer  wall  of 
basalt  seven  hundred  feet  in  height.  This  little  cas- 
cade reminded  us  of  Po-ho-n6,  or  The  Bridal  Veil, 
near  the  lower  entrance  of  the  Great  Yo-Semite. 

As  the  steamer  rounded  a  point  into  each  new 
stretch  of  silent,  green,  and  sunny  river,  we  sent  a 
flock  of  geese  or  ducks  hurrying  cloudward  or  shore- 
ward. Here,  too,  for  the  first  time  in  a  state  of  abso- 
lute Nature,  I  saw  that  royal  bird,  the  swan,  escorting 
his  mate  and  cygnets  on  an  airing  or  a  luncheon-tour. 
It  was  a  beautiful  sight,  though  I  must  confess  that 
his  Majesty  and  all  the  royal  family  are  improved  by 
civilization.  One  of  the  great  benefits  of  civilization 
is,  that  it  restricts  its  subjects  to  doing  what  they  can 
do  best.  Park-swans  seldom  fly,  —  and  flying  is  some- 
thing that  swans  should  never  attempt,  unless  they 
wish  to  be  taken  for  geese.  I  felt  actually,  desillusionne, 
when  a  princely  cortege,  which  had  been  rippling  their 
snowy  necks  in  the  sunshine,  clumsily  lifted  them- 
selves out  of  the  water  and  slanted  into  the  clouds, 
stretching  those  necks  straight  as  a  gun-barrel.  Ev- 
ery line  of  grace  seemed  wire-drawn  out  of  them  in 
a  moment.  Song  is  as  little  their  forte  as  flight,  — 
barring  the  poetic  license  open  to  moribund  members 
of  their  family,  —  and  I  must  confess,  that,  if  this 

31 


482      THE  HEART  OF  THE  CONTINENT. 

privilege  indicate  approaching  dissolution,  the  most 
intimate  friends  of  the  specimens  we  heard  have  no 
cause  for  apprehension.  An  Adirondack  loon  fortify- 
ing his  utterance  by  a  cracked  fish-horn  is  the  near- 
est approach  to  a  healthy  swan-song.  On  the  whole, 
the  wild  swan  cannot  afford  to  <*  pause  in  his  cloud  " 
for  all  the  encomiums  of  Mr.  Tennyson,  and  had  better 
come  down  immediately  to  the  dreamy  water-level, 
where  he  floats  dream  within  dream,  like  a  stable 
vapor  in  a  tangible  sky.  Anywhere  else  he  seems  a 
courtrbeaiity  wandering  into  metaphysics. 

Alternating  with  these  swimmers  came  occasional 
flocks  of  shag,  a  bird  belonging  to  the  cormorant 
tribe,  and  here  and  there  a  gull,  though  these  last 
grew  rarer  as  we  increased  our  distance  from  the  sea. 
I  was  surprised  to  notice  a  fine  seal  playing  in  the 
channel,  twenty  .miles  above  Fort  Vancouver,  but 
learned  that  it  was  not  unusual  for  these  animals  to 
ascend  nearly  to  the  cataract.  Both  the  whites  and 
Indians  scattered  along  the  river  banks  kill  them  for 
their  skin  and  blubber,  —  going  out  in  boats  for  the 
purpose.  •  My  informant's  boat  had  on  one  occasion 
taken  an  old  seal  nursing  her  calf.  When  the  dam 
was  towed  to  shore,  the  young  one  followed  her, 
occasionally  putting  its  fore-flippers  on  the  gunwale 
to  rest,  like  a  Newfoundland  dog,  and  behaving  with 
such  innocent  familiarity  that  malice  was  disarmed. 
It  came  ashore  with  the  boat's-crew  and  the  body  of 
its  parent ;  no  one  had  the  heart  to  drive  it  away ; 
so  it  stayed  and  was  a  pet  of  the  camp  from  that 
time  forward.  After  a  while  the  party  moved  its 
position  a  distance  of  several  miles  while  Jack  was 
away  in  the  river  on  a  fishing  excursion,  but  there 
was  no  eluding  him.  The  morning  after  the  shift  he 


ON  THE   COLUMBIA  RIVER.  483 

came  wagging  into  camp,  a  faithful  and  much,  over- 
joyed, but  exceedingly  battered  and  used-up  seal. 
He  had  evidently  sought  his  friends  by  rock  and 
flood  the  entire  night  preceding. 

Occasionally  the  lonely  river-stretches  caught  a 
sudden  human  interest  in  some  gracefully  modeled 
canoe  gliding  out  with  a  crew  of  Chinook  Indians 
from  the  shadow  of  a  giant  promontory,  propelled 
by  a  square  sail  learned  of  the  whites.  Knowing  the 
natural,  ingrained  laziness  of  Indians,  one  can  imag- 
ine the  delight  with  which  they  comprehended  that 
substitute  for  the  paddle.  After  all,  this  may  per- 
haps be  an  ill-natured  thing  to  say.  Who  does  like 
to  drudge  when  he  can  help  it  ?  Is  not  this  very 
"  Wilson  G.  Hunt "  a  triumph  of  human  laziness,  vindi- 
cating its  claim  to  be  the  lord  of  matter  by  an  inge- 
nuity doing  labor's  utmost  without  sweat  ?  After  all, 
nobody  but  a  fool  drudges  for  other  reason  than  that 
he  may  presently  stop  drudging. 

At  short  intervals  along  the  narrow  strip  of  shore 
under  the  more  gradual  steeps,  on  the  lower  ledges 
of  the  basaltic  precipices,  and  on  little  rock-islands 
in  the  river,  appeared  rude-looking  stacks  and  scaf- 
foldings where  the  Indians  had  packed  their  salmon. 
They  left  it  in  the  open  air  without  guard,  as  fearless 
of  robbers  as  if  the  fish  did  not  constitute  their  al- 
most entire  subsistence  for  the  winter.  And  within 
their  own  tribes  they  have  justification  for  this  fear- 
lessness. Their  standard  of  honor  is  in  most  respects 
curiously  adjustable, — but  here  virtue  is  defended  by 
the  necessities  of  life. 

In  the  immediate  vicinity  of  the  cured  article  (I 
say  "  cured,"  though  the  process  is  a  mere  drying 
without  smoke  or  salt)  may  be  seen  the  apparatus 


484  THE   HEART  OF   THE   CONTINENT. 

contrived  for  getting  it  in  the  fresh  state.  This  is 
the  scaffolding  from  which  the  salmon  are  caught. 
It  is  a  horizontal  platform  shaped  like  a  capital  A, 
erected  upon  a  similarly  framed,  but  perpendicular 
set  of  braces,  with  a  projection  of  several  feet  over 
the  river  brink  at  a  place  where  the  water  runs  rap- 
idly close  in -shore.  If  practicable,  the  constructor 
modifies  his  current  artificially,  banking  it  inward 
with  large  stones,  so  as  to  form  a  sort  of  sluice  in 
which  passing  fish  will  be  more  completely  at  his 
mercy.  At  the  season  of  their  periodic  ascent,  sal- 
mon swarm  in  all  the  rivers  of  our  Pacific  coast ;  the 
Columbia  and  Willamette  are  alive  with  them  for  a 
long  distance  above  the  cascades  of  the  one  and  the 
Oregon  City  Fall  of  the  other.  The  fisherman  stands, 
nearly  or  quite  naked,  at  the  edge  of  his  scaffolding, 
armed  with  a  net  extended  at  the  end  of  a  long  pole, 
and  so  ingeniously  contrived  that  the  weight  of  the 
salmon  and  a  little  dexterous  management  draw  its 
mouth  shut  on  the  captive  like  a  purse  as  soon  as  he 
has  entered.  A  helper  stands  behind  the  fisherman 
to  assist  in  raising  the  haul,  —  to  give  the  fish  a  tap 
on  the  nose,  which  kills  him  instantly,  —  and  finally 
to  carry  him  ashore  to  be  split  and  dried,  without 
any  danger  of  his  throwing  himself  back  into  the 
water  from  the  hands  of  his  captors,  as  might  easily 
happen  by  omitting  the  coup-  de- grace.  Another 
method  of  catching  salmon,  much  in  vogue  among 
the  Sacramento  and  Pitt  River  tribes,  but  apparently 
less  employed  by  the  Indians  of  the  Columbia,  is  har- 
pooning with  a  very  clever  instrument  constructed 
after  this  wise.  A  hard  wood  shaft  is  neatly,  but  not 
tightly,  fitted  into  the  socket  of  a  sharp-barbed  spear- 
head carved  from  bone.  Through  a  hole  drilled  in 


ON  THE   COLUMBIA  RIVER.  485 

the  spear-head  a  stout  cord  of  deer-sinew  is  fastened 
by  one  end,  its  other  being  secured  to  the  shaft  near 
its  insertion.  The  salmon  is  struck  by  this  weapon 
in  the  manner  of  the  ordinary  fish-spear ;  the  head 
slips  off  the  shaft  as  soon  as  the  barbs  lodge,  and  the 
harpoon  virtually  becomes  a  fishing-rod,  with  the 
sinew  for  a  line.  This  arrangement  is  much  more 
manageable  than  the  common  spear,  as  it  greatly 
diminishes  the  chances  of  losing  fish  and  breaking 
shafts. 

There  can  scarcely  be  a  more  sculpturesque  sight 
than  that  of  a  finely  formed,  well-grown  young  Indian 
struggling  on  his  scaffold  with  an  unusually  powerful 
fish.  Every  muscle  of  his  wiry  frame  stands  out  in 
its  turn  in  unveiled  relief,  and  you  see  in  him  atti- 
tudes of  grace  and  power  which  will  not  let  you  re- 
gret the  "  Apollo  Belvedere  "  or  the  "  Gladiator."  The 
only  pity  is  that  this  ideal  Indian  is  a  rare  being. 
The  Indians  of  this  coast  and  river  are  divided  into 
two  broad  classes,  —  the  Fish  Indians,  and  the  Meat 
Indians.  The  latter,  ceferis  paribus,  are  much  the 
finer  race,  derive  the  greater  portion  of  their  sub- 
sistence from  the  chase,  and  possess  the  athletic  mind 
and  body  which  result  from  active  methods  of  win- 
ning a  livelihood.  The  former  are,  to  a  great  extent, 
victims  of  that  generic  and  hereditary  tabes  mesenter- 
ica  which  produces  the  peculiar  pot-bellied  and  spin- 
dle -  shanked  type  of  savage  ;  their  manners  are 
milder;  their  virtues  and  vices  are  done  in  water- 
color,  as  comports  with  their  source  of  supply.  There 
are  some  tribes  which  partake  of  the  habits  of  both 
classes,  living  in  mountain-fastnesses  part  of  the  year 
by  the  bow  and  arrow,  but  coming  down  to  the  river 
in  the  salmon-season  for  an  addition  to  their  winter 


486      THE  HEART  OF  THE  CONTINENT. 

bill-of-fare.  Anywhere  rather  than  among  the  pure 
Fish  Indians  is  the  place  to  look  for  savage  beauty. 
Still  these  tribes  have  fortified  their  feebleness  by 
such  a  cultivation  of  their  ingenuity  as  surprises  one 
seeing  for  the  first  time  their  well-adapted  tools,  com- 
fortable lodges,  and,  in  some  cases,  really  beautiful 
canoes.  In  the  last  respect,  however,  the  Indians 
nearer  the  coast  surpass  those  up  the  Columbia,  — 
some  of  their  carved  and  painted  canoes  equaling 
the  "  crackest  "  of  shell-boats  in  elegance  of  line,  and 
beauty  of  ornament. 

In  a  former  chapter  devoted  to  the  Great  Yo-Sem- 
ite  I  had  occasion  to  remark  that  Indian  legend,  like 
all  ancient  poetry,  often  contains  a  scientific  truth 
embalmed  in  the  spices  of  metaphor,  —  or,  to  vary 
the  figure,  that  Mudjekeewis  stands  holding  the  lan- 
tern for  Agassiz  and  Dana  to  dig  by. 

Coming  to  the  Falls  of  the  Columbia,  we  find  a  case 
in  point.  Nearly  equidistant  from  the  longitudes  of 
Fort  Vancouver  and  Mount  Hood,  the  entire  Colum- 
bia Kiver  falls  twenty  feet  over  a  perpendicular  wall 
of  basalt,  extending,  with  minor  deviations  from  the 
right  angle,  entirely  between-shores,  a  breadth  of 
about  a  mile.  The  height  of  Niagara  and  the  close 
compression  of  its  vast  volume  make  it  a  grander 
sight  than  the  Falls  of  the  Columbia,  —  but  no  other 
cataract  known  to  me  on  this  Continent  rivals  it  for 
an  instant.  The  great  American  Falls  of  Snake  are 
much  loftier  and  more  savage  than  either,  but  their 
volume  is  so  much  less  as  to  counterbalance  those 
advantages.  Taking  the  Falls  of  the  Columbia  all 
in  all,  —  including  their  upper  and  lower  rapids,  — 
it  must  be  confessed  that  they  exhibit  every  phase 
of  tormented  water  in  its  beauty  of  color  or  grace  of 
form,  its  wrath  or  its  whim. 


ON  THE   COLUMBIA  KIVEK.  487 

The  Indians  have  a  tradition  that  the  river  once 
followed  a  uniform  level  from  the  Dalles  to  the  sea. 
This  tradition  states  that  Mounts  Hood  and  St.  Hel- 
en's are  husband  and  wife,  —  whereby  is  intended 
that  their  tutelar  divinities  stand  in  that  mutual  re- 
lation ;  that  in  comparatively  recent  times  there  ex- 
isted a  rocky  bridge  across  the  Columbia  at  the 
present  site  of  the  cataract,  and  that  across  this 
bridge  Hood  and  St.  Helen's  were  wont  to  pass  for 
interchange  of  visits ;  that,  while  this  bridge  existed, 
there  was  a  free  subterraneous  passage  under  it  for 
the  river  and  the  canoes  of  the  tribes  (indeed,  this 
tradition  is  so  universally  credited  as  to  stagger  the 
skeptic  by  a  mere  calculation  of  chances) ;  that,  on  a 
certain  occasion,  the  mountainous  pair,  like  others 
not  mountainous,  came  to  high  words,  and  during 
their  altercation  broke  the  bridge  down ;  falling  into 
the  river,  this  colossal  Rialto  became  a  dam,  and  ever 
since  that  day  the  upper  river  has  been  backed  to  its 
present  level,  submerging  vast  tracts  of  country  far 
above  its  original  bed. 

I  notice  that  excellent  geological  authorities  are 
willing  to  treat  this  legend  respectfully,  as  contain- 
ing in  symbols  the  probable  key  to  the  natural  phe- 
nomena. Whether  the  original  course  of  the  Columbia 
at  this  place  was  through  a  narrow  canon  or  under  an 
actual  roof  of  rock,  the  adjacent  material  has  been  at 
no  very  remote  date  toppled  into  it  to  make  the  cata- 
ract, and  alter  the  bed  to  its  present  level.  Both 
Hood  and  St.  Helen's  are  volcanic  cones.  The  latter 
has  been  seen  to  smoke  within  the  last  twelve  years. 
It  is  not  unlikely  that  during  the  last  few  centuries 
some  intestine  disturbance  may  have  occurred  along 
the  axis  between  the  two,  sufficient  to  account  for 


488      THE  HEART  OF  THE  CONTINENT. 

the  precipitation  of  that  mass  of  rock  which  now 
forms  the  dam.  That  we  cannot  refer  the  cataclysm 
to  a  very  ancient  date  seems  to  be  argued  by  the 
state  of  preservation  in  which  we  still  find  the  stumps 
of  the  celebrated  "  submerged  forest/'  extending  a 
long  distance  up  the  river  above  the  Falls. 

At  the  foot  of  the  cataract  we  landed  from  the 
steamer  on  the  Washington  side  of  the  river,  and 
found  a  railroad  train  waiting  to  do  our  portage.  It 
was  a  strange  feeling,  that  of  whirling  along  by  steam 
where  so  few  years  before  the  Indian  and  the  trader 
had  toiled  through  the  virgin  forest,  bending  under 
the  weight  of  their  canoes.  And  this  is  one  of  the 
characteristic  surprises  of  American  scenery  every- 
where. You  cannot  isolate  yourself  from  the  national 
civilization.  In  a  Swiss  chalet  you  may  escape  from 
all  memories  of  Geneva ;  among  the  Grampians  you 
find  an  entirely  different  set  of  ideas  from  those  of 
Edinburgh:  but  the  same  enterprise  which  makes 
itself  felt  in  New  York  and  Boston  starts  up  for  your 
astonishment  out  of  all  the  fastnesses  of  the  Conti- 
nent. Virgin  Nature  wooes  our  civilization  to  wed 
her,  and  no  obstacles  can  conquer  the  American  fasci- 
nation. In  our  journey  through  the  wildest  parts  of 
this  country,  we  were  perpetually  finding  patent 
washing-machines  among  the  chaparral,  —  canned 
fruit  in  the  desert,  —  Voigtlander's  field-glasses  on 
the  snow-peak,  —  lemon -soda  in  the  canon,  —  men 
who  were  sure  a  railroad  would  be  run  by  their  cabin 
within  ten  years,  in  every  spot  where  such  a  surprise 
was  most  remarkable. 

The  portage  road  is  six  miles  in  length,  leading 
nearly  all  the  way  close  along  the  edge  of  the  North 
Bluff,  which,  owing  to  a  recession  of  the  mountains, 


ON  THE   COLUMBIA  RIVER.  489 

seems  here  only  from  fifty  to  eighty  feet  in  height. 
From  the  windows  of  the  train  we  enjoyed  an  almost 
uninterrupted  view  of  the  rapids,  which  are  only  less 
grand  and  forceful  in  their  impression  than  those 
above  Niagara.  They  are  broken  up  into  narrow 
channels  by  numerous  bold  and  naked  islands  of  trap. 
Through  these  the  water  roars,  boils,  and,  striking 
projections,  spouts  upward  in  jets  whose  plumy  top 
blows  off  in  sheets  of  spray.  It  is  tormented  into 
whirlpools ;  it  is  combed  into  fine  threads,  and  strays 
whitely  over  a  rugged  ledge  like  old  men's  hair ;  it 
takes  all  curves  of  grace  and  arrow-flights  of  force ; 
it  is  water  doing  all  that  water  can  do  or  be  made  to 
do.  The  painter  who  spent  a  year  in  making  studies 
of  it  would  not  throw  his  time  away ;  when  he  had 
finished,  he  could  not  misrepresent  water  under  any 
phases. 

At  the  upper  end  of  the  portage  road  we  found 
another  and  smaller  steamer  awaiting  us,  with  equally 
kind  provision  for  our  comfort  made  by  the  Com- 
pany and  the  captain.  In  both  steamers  we  were  ac- 
corded excellent  opportunities  for  drawing  and  obser- 
vation, getting  seats  in  the  pilot-house. 

Above  the  rapids  the  river  banks  were  bold  and 
rocky.  The  stream  changed  from  its  recent  Niagara 
green  to  a  brown  like  that  of  the  Hudson ;  and  un- 
der its  waters,  as  we  hugged  the  Oregon  side,  could 
be  seen  a  submerged  alluvial  plateau,  studded  thick 
with  drowned  stumps,  here  and  there  lifting  their 
splintered  tops  above  the  water,  and  measuring  from 
the  diameter  of  a  sapling  to  that  of  a  trunk  which 
might  once  have  been  one  hundred  feet  high. 

Between  Fort  Vancouver  and  the  cataract  the 
banks  of  the  river  seem  nearly  as  wild  as  on  the  day 


490      THE  HEART  OF  THE  CONTINENT. 

\ 

they  were  discovered  by  the  whites.  On  neither  the 
Oregon  nor  the  Washington  side  is  there  any  settle- 
ment visible,  —  a  small  wood- wharf,  or  the  temporary 
hut  of  a  salmon-fisher,  being  the  only  sign  of  human 
possession.  At  the  Falls  we  noticed  a  single  white 
house  standing  in  a  commanding  position  high  up  on 
the  wooded  ledges  of  the  Oregon  shore ;  and  the  taste 
shown  in  placing  and  constructing  it  was  worthy  of  a 
Hudson  Kiver  landholder.  This  is,  perhaps,  the  first 
attempt  at  a  distinct  country  residence  made  in  Ore- 
gon, and  belongs  to  a  Mr.  Olmstead,  who  was  one  of 
the  earliest  settlers  and  projectors  of  public  improve- 
ments in  the  State.  He  was  actively  engaged  in  the 
building  of  the  first  portage  railroad,  which  ran  on 
the  Oregon  side.  The  entire  interests  of  both  have, 
I  believe,  been  concentrated  in  the  newer  one ;  and 
the  Oregon  road,  after  building  itself  by  feats  of  busi- 
ness energy  and  ingenuity  known  only  to  American 
pioneer  enterprise,  has  fallen  into  entire  or  compara- 
tive disuse. 

Above  the  Falls  we  found  as  unsettled  a  river 
margin  as  below.  Occasionally,  some  bright  spot  of 
color  attracted  us,  relieved  against  the  walls  of  trap 
or  glacis  of  evergreen ;  and  this  upon  nearer  approach, 
or  by  the  glass,  was  resolved  into  a  group  of  river  In- 
dians,— part  with  the  curiously  compressed  foreheads 
of  the  Flat-head  tribe,  their  serene  nakedness  draped 
with  blankets  of  every  variety  of  hue,  from  fresh 
flaming  red  to  weather-beaten  army  blue,  and  adorned 
as  to  their  cheeks  with  smutches  of  the  cinnabar- 
rouge  which  from  time  immemorial  has  been  a  prime 
article  of  import  among  the  fashionable  native  circles 
of  the  Columbia,  —  the  other  part  round-headed,  and 
(I  have  no  doubt  it  appears  a  perfect  sequitur  to  the 


ON  THE   COLUMBIA  RIVER.  491 

Flatrhead  conservatives)  therefore  slaves.  The  cap- 
tive in  battle  seems  more  economically  treated  among 
these  savages  than  is  common  anywhere  else  in  the 
Indian  regions  we  traversed  (though  I  suppose  sla- 
very is  to  some  extent  universal  throughout  the 
tribes),  —  the  captors  properly  arguing  that  so  long 
as  they  can  make  a  man  fish  and  boil  pot  for  them,  it 
is  a  very  foolish  waste  of  material  to  kill  him. 

At  intervals  above  the  Falls  we  passed  several  small 
islands  of  special  interest  as  being  the  cemeteries  of 
river  tribes.  The  principal,  called  "Mimitus,"  was 
sacred  as  the  resting-place  of  a  very  noted  chief. 
I  have  forgotten  his  name.  The  deceased  is  en- 
tombed like  a  person  of  quality,  in  a  wooden  mauso- 
leum having  something  the  appearance  of  a  log-cabin, 
upon  which  pains  have  been  expended,  and  contain- 
ing, with  the  human  remains,  robes,  weapons,  baskets, 
canoes,  and  all  the  furniture  of  Indian  menage,  to  an 
extent  which  among  the  tribes  amounts  to  a  fortune. 
This  sepulchral  idea  is  a  clear-headed  one,  and  worthy 
of  Eastern  adoption.  Old  ladies  with  lace  and  nieces, 
old  gentlemen  with  cellars  and  nephews,  might  be 
certain  that  the  solace  which  they  received  in  life's 
decline  was  purely  disinterested,  if  about  middle  age 
they  should  announce  that  their  Point  and  their  Port 
were  going  to  Mount  Auburn  with  them. 

The  river  grew  narrower,  its  banks  becoming  low, 
perpendicular  walls  of  basalt,  water-worn  at  the  base, 
squarely  cut  and  castellated  at  the  top,  and  bare 
everywhere  as  any  pile  of  masonry.  The  hills  beyond 
became  naked,  or  covered  only  with  short  grass  of 
the  gramma  kind  and  dusty-gray  sage  brush.  Simul- 
taneously they  lost  some  of  their  previous  basaltic 
characteristics,  running  into  more  convex  outlines, 


492       THE  HEART  OF  THE  CONTINENT. 

which  receded  from  the  river.  We  could  not  fail  to 
recognize  the  fact  that  we  had  crossed  one  of  the 
great  thresholds  of  the  Continent, —  were  once  more 
east  of  the  Sierra  Nevada  axis,  and  in  the  great  cen- 
tral plateau  which  a  few  months  previous,  and  several 
hundred  miles  farther  south,  we  had  crossed  amid  so 
many  pains  and  perils  by  the  Desert  route  to  Washoe. 
From  the  grizzly  mountains  before  us  to  the  sources 
of  the  Snake  Fork  stretched  an  almost  uninterrupted 
wilderness  of  sage.  The  change  in  passing  to  this 
region  from  the  fertile  and  timbered  tracts  of  the 
Cascades  and  the  coast  is  more  abrupt  than  can  be 
imagined  by  one  familiar  with  our  delicately  modu- 
lated Eastern  scenery.  This  sharpness  of  definition 
seems  to  characterize  the  entire  border  of  the  pla- 
teau. Five  hours  of  travel  between  Washoe  and 
Sacramento  carry  one  out  of  the  nakedest  stone  heap 
into  the  grandest  forest  of  the  Continent. 

As  we  emerged  from  the  confinement  of  the  nearer 
ranges,  Mount  Hood,  hitherto  visible  only  through 
occasional  rifts,  loomed  broadly  into  sight  almost  from 
base  to  peak,  covered  with  a  mantle  of  perennial 
snow  scarcely  less  complete  to  our  near  inspection 
than  it  had  seemed  from  our  observatory  south  of 
Salem.  Only  here  and  there  toward  its  lower  rim  a 
tatter  in  it  revealed  the  giant's  rugged  brown  muscle 
of  volcanic  rock.  The  top  of  the  mountain,  like  that 
of  Shasta,  in  direct  sunlight  is  an  opal.  So  far  above 
the  line  of  thaw,  the  snow  seems  to  have  accumu- 
lated until  by  its  own  weight  it  has  condensed  into  a 
more  compactly  crystalline  structure  than  ice  itself; 
and  the  reflections  from  it,  as  I  stated  of  Shasta,  seem 
rather  emanations  from  some  interior  source  of  light. 
The  look  is  distinctly  opaline,  or,  as  a  poet  has  called 
the  opal,  like  "  a  pearl  with  a  soul  in  it." 


ON   THE   COLUMBIA  RIVER.  493 

About  five  o'clock  in  the  afternoon  we  reached  the 
Oregon  town  and  mining-depot  of  Dalles  City.  A 
glance  at  any  good  War  Department  map  of  Oregon 
and  Washington  Territories  will  explain  the  impor- 
tance of  this  place,  where  considerably  previous  to 
the  foundation  of  the  present  large  and  growing  set- 
tlement there  existed  a  fort  and  trading-post  of  the 
same  name.  It  stands,  as  we  have  said,  at  the  en- 
trance to  the  great  pass  by  which  the  Columbia  breaks 
through  the  mountains  to  the  sea.  Just  west  of  it  oc- 
curs an  interruption  to  the  navigation  of  the  river, 
practically  as  formidable  as  the  first  cataract.  This  is 
the  upper  rapids  and  "the  Dalles"  proper,  —  pres- 
ently to  be  described  in  detail.  The  position  of  the 
town,  at  one  end  of  a  principal  portage,  and  at  the 
easiest  door  to  the  Pacific,  renders  it  a  natural  entre- 
p6t  between  the  latter  and  the  great  central  plateau 
of  the  Continent.  This  it  must  have  been  in  any 
case  for  fur-traders  and  emigrants,  but  its  business 
has  been  vastly  increased  by  the  discovery  of  that 
immense  mining  area  distributed  along  the  Snake 
Biver  and  its  tributaries  as  far  east  as  the  Kocky 
Mountains.  The  John  Day,  Boise,  and  numerous 
other  tracts  both  in  Washington  and  Idaho  Territo- 
ries draw  most  of  their  supplies  from  this  *  entrepot, 
and  their  gold  comes  down  to  it  either  for  direct  use 
in  the  outfit  market,  or  to  be  passed  down  the  river 
to  Portland  and  the  San  Francisco  mint. 

I  do  not  lay  particular  stress  upon  the  mines  of 
Washington  and  Idaho  as  sources  of  profit  to  the 
Pacific  Kailroad.  This  is  for  the  reason  that  the 
Snake  River  seems  the  proper  outlet  to  much  of  the 
auriferous  region,  and  this  route  may  be  susceptible 
of  improvement  by  an  alternation  of  portages,  roads, 


494      THE  HEART  OP  THE  CONTINENT. 

and  water-levels,  which  for  a  long  time  to  come  will 
form  a  means  of  communication  more  economical  and 
rapid  than  a  branch  to  the  Pacific  Road.  The  north- 
ern mines  east  of  the  Rocky  range  will  find  them- 
selves occupying  somewhat  similar  relations  to  the 
Missouri  River,  which  rises,  as  one  might  almost  say, 
out  of  the  same  spring  as  the  Snake,  —  certainly  out 
of  the  same  ridge  of  the  Rocky  Mountains. 

"The  Dalles"  is  a  town  of  one  street,  built  close 
along  the  edge  of  a  bluff  of  trap  thirty  or  forty  feet 
high,  perfectly  perpendicular,  level  on  the  top  as  if 
it  had  been  graded  for  a  city,  and  with  depth  of  wa- 
ter at  its  base  for  the  heaviest  draught  boats  on  the 
river.  In  fact,  the  whole  water-front  is  a  natural 
quay,  —  which  wants  nothing  but  time  to  make  it 
alive  with  steam-elevators,  warehouses,  and  derricks. 
To  Portland  and  the  Columbia  it  stands  much  as  St. 
Louis  to  New  Orleans  and  the  Mississippi.  There  is  no 
reason  why  it  should  not  some  day  have  a  correspond- 
ing business,  for  whose  wharfage  accommodation  it  has 
even  greater  natural  advantages. 

Architecturally,  the  Dalles  cannot  be  said  to  lean 
very  heavily  on  the  side  of  beauty.  The  houses  are 
mostly  two-story  structures  of  wood,  occupied  by  all 
the  trades  and  professions  which  flock  to  a  new  min- 
ing entrepot.  Outfit  merchants,  blacksmiths,  printing- 
office  (for  there  is  really  a  very  well-conducted  daily 
at  the  Dalles),  are  cheek  by  jowl  with  doctors,  tailors, 
and  Cheap  Johns,  —  the  latter  being  only  less  merry 
and  thrifty  over  their  incredible  sacrifices  in  every- 
thing, from  pins  to  corduroy,  than  that  predominant 
class  of  all,  the  bar-keepers  themselves.  The  town 
was  in  a  state  of  bustle  when  our  steamer  touched 
the  wharf;  it  bustled  more  and  more  from  there  to 


ON  THE   COLUMBIA   RIVER.  495 

the  Umatilla  House,  where  we  stopped ;  the  hotel 
was  one  organized  bustle  in  bar  and  dining  room ; 
and  bed-time  brought  no  hush.  The  Dalles,  like  the 
Irishman,  seemed  sitting  up  all  night  to  be  fresh  for 
an  early  start  in  the  morning. 

We  found  everybody  interested  in  gold.  Crowds 
of  listeners,  with  looks  of  incredulity  or  enthusiasm, 
were  gathered  around  the  party  in  the  bar-room  which 
had  last  come  in  from  the  newest  of  the  new  mines, 
and  a  man  who  had  seen  the  late  Fort  Hall  discoveries 
was  "  treated  "  to  that  extent  that  he  might  have  be- 
come intoxicated  a  dozen  times  without  expense  to 
himself.  The  charms  of  the  interior  were  still  further 
suggested  by  placards  posted  on  every  wall,  offering 
rewards  for  the  capture  of  a  person  who  on  the  great 
gold  route  had  lately  committed  some  of  the  grim- 
mest murders  and  most  talented  robberies  known  in 
any  branch  of  Newgate  enterprise.  I  had  for  supper 
a  very  good  omelet  (considering  its  distance  from  the 
culinary  centres  of  the  universe),  and  a  Dalles  edito- 
rial debating  the  claims  of  several  noted  cut- throats 
to  the  credit  of  the  operations  ascribed  to  them,  — 
feeling  that  in  the  ensemble  I  was  enjoying  both  the 
exotic  and  the  indigenous  luxuries  of  our  virgin  soil. 

After  supper  and  a  stroll  I  returned  to  the  ladies' 
parlor  of  the  Umatilla  House,  rubbed  my  eyes  in  vain 
to  dispel  the  illusion  of  a  piano  and  a  carpet  at  this 
jumping-off  place  of  civilization,  and  sat  down  at  a 
handsome  centre-table  to  write  up  my  journal.  I  had 
reviewed  my  way  from  Portland  as  far  as  Fort  Van- 
couver, when  another  illusion  happened  to  me  in  the 
shape  of  a  party  of  gentlemen  and  ladies,  in  ball- 
dresses,  dress-coats,  white  kids,  and  elaborate  hair, 
who  entered  the  parlor  to  wait  for  further  accessions 


496      THE  HEART  OF  THE  CONTINENT." 

from  the  hotel.  They  were  on  their  way  with  a  band 
of  music  to  give  some  popular  citizen  a  surprise 
party.  The  popular  citizen  never  got  the  fine  edge 
of  that  surprise.  I  took  it  off  for  him.  If  it  were 
not  too  much  like  a  little  Cockney  on  Vancouver's 
Island  who  used  the  phrase  on  all  occasions,  from 
stubbing  his  toe  to  the  death  of  a  Cabinet  Lord,  I 
should  say,  "I  never  was  more  astonished  in  me 
life!" 

None  of  them  had  ever  seen  me  before, — and  with 
my  books  and  maps  about  me,  I  may  have  looked  like 
some  public,  yet  mysterious  character.  I  felt  a  pleas- 
ant sensation  of  having  interest  taken  in  me,  and, 
wishing  to  make  an  ingenuous  return,  looked  up  with 
a  casual  smile  at  one  of  the  party.  Again  to  my  sur- 
prise, this  proved  to  be  a  very  charming  young  lady, 
and  I  timidly  became  aware  that  the  others  were 
equally  pretty  in  their  several  styles.  Not  knowing 
what  else  to  do  under  the  circumstances,  I  smiled 
again,  still  more  casually.  An  equal  uncertainty  as 
to  alternative  set  the  ladies  smiling  quite  across  the 
row,  and  then,  to  my  relief,  the  gentlemen  joined 
them,  making  it  pleasant  for  us  all.  A  moment  later 
we  were  engaged  in  general  conversation,  —  starting 
from  the  bold  hypothesis,  thrown  out  by  one  of  the 
gentlemen,  that  perhaps  I  was  going  to  Boise,  and 
proceeding,  by  a  process  of  elimination,  to  the  accu- 
rate knowledge  of  what  I  was  going  to  do,  if  it 
wasn't  that.  I  enjoyed  one  of  the  most  cheerful  bits 
of  social  relaxation  I  had  found  since  crossing  the 
Missouri;  and  nothing  but  my  duty  to  my  journal 
prevented  me,  when  my  surprise  party  left,  from  ac- 
companying them,  by  invitation,  under  the  brevet 
title  of  Professor,  to  the  house  of  the  popular  citizen, 


ON  THE   COLUMBIA  RIVER.  497 

who,  I  was  assured,  would  be  glad  to  see  me.  I  cer- 
tainly should  have  been  glad  to  see  him,  if  he  was 
anything  like  those  guests  of  his  who  had  so  ingenu- 
ously cultivated  me  in  a  far  land  of  strangers,  where 
a  man  might  have  been  glad  to  form  the  acquaint 
ance  of  his  mother-in-law.  This  is  not  the  way  peo- 
ple form  acquaintances  in  New  York ;  but  if  I  had 
wanted  that,  why  not  have  stayed  there  ?  As  a  cos- 
mopolite, and  on  general  principles  of  being,  I  prefer 
the  Dalles  way.  I  have  no  doubt  I  should  have  found 
in  that  circle  of  spontaneous  recognitions  quite  as 
many  people  who  stood  wear  and  improved  on  inti- 
macy as  were  ever  vouchsafed  to  me  by  social  in- 
dorsement from  somebody  else.  We  are  perpetually 
blaming  our  heads  of  Government  bureaus  for  their 
poor  knowledge  of  character,  —  their  subordinates, 
we  say,  are  never  pegs  in  the  right  holes.  If  we  un- 
derstood our  civilized  system  of  introductions,  we 
could  not  rationally  expect  anything  else.  The  great 
mass  of  polite  mankind  are  trained  not  to  know  char- 
acter, but  to  take  somebody  else's  voucher  for  it. 
Their  acquaintances,  most  of  their  friendships,  come 
to  them  through  a  succession  of  indorsers,  none  of 
whom  may  have  known  anything  of  the  goodness  of 
the  paper.  A  sensible  man,  conventionally  introduced 
to  his  fellow,  must  always  wonder  why  the  latter  does 
not  turn  him  around  to  look  for  signatures  in  chalk 
down  the  back  of  his  coat ;  for  he  knows  that  Brown 
indorsed  him  over  to  Jones,  and  Jones  negotiated  him 
with  Robinson,  through  a  succession  in  which  perhaps 
two  out  of  a  hundred  took  pains  to  know  whether  he 
represented  metal.  You  do  not  find  the  people  of  new 
countries  making  mistakes  in  character.  Every  man 
is  his  own  guaranty,  —  and  if  he  has  no  just  cause  to 

82 


498      THE  HEART  OF  THE  CONTINENT. 

suspect  himself  bogus,  there  will  be  true  pleasure  in 
a  frank  opening  of  himself  to  the  examination  and 
his  eyes  for  the  study  of  others.  Not  to  be  accused 
of  intruding  radical  reform  under  the  guise  of  belles- 
lettres,  let  me  say  that  I  have  no  intention  of  intro- 
ducing this  innovation  at  the  East. 

In  the  afternoon  of  the  next  day  we  were  provided, 
by  the  courtesy  of  the  Company,  with  a  special  train 
on  the  portage  railroad  connecting  Dalles  City  with  a 
station  known  as  Celilo.  This  road  had  but  recently 
come  into  full  operation,  and  was  now  doing  an  im- 
mense freight  business  between  the  two  river  levels 
separated  by  the  intervening  "Dalles."  It  seemed 
somewhat  longer  than  the  road  around  the  Falls.  Its 
exact  length  has  escaped  me,  but  I  think  it  about 
eight  or  nine  miles. 

With  several  officers  of  the  road,  who  vied  in  giv- 
ing us  opportunities  of  comfort  and  information,  we 
set  out,  about  three  P.  M.,  from  a  station  on  the  water- 
front below  the  town,  whence  we  trundled  through 
the  long  main  street,  and  were  presently  shot  forth 
upon  a  wilderness  of  sand.  An  occasional  trap  uplift 
rose  on  our  right,  but,  as  we  were  on  the  same  bluff 
level  as  Dalles  City,  we  met  no  lofty  precipices.  We 
were  constantly  in  view  of  the  river,  separated  from 
its  Oregon  brink  at  the  farthest  by  about  half  a  mile 
of  the  dreariest  dunes  of  shifting  sand  ever  seen  by 
an  amateur  in  deserts.  The  most  arid  tracts  along 
the  Platte  could  not  rival  this.  The  wind  was  vio- 
lent when  we  left  Dalles  City,  and  possessed  the  novel 
faculty  of  blowing  simultaneously -from  all  points  of 
the  compass.  It  increased  with  every  mile  of  ad- 
vance, both  in  force  and  faculty,  until  at  Celilo  we 
found  it  a  hurricane.  The  gentlemen  of  the  Com- 


ON  THE   COLUMBIA  RIVER.  499 

pany  who  attended  us,  told  us,  as  seemed  very  credi- 
ble, that  the  highest  winds  blowing  here  (compared 
with  which  the  present  might  be  styled  a  zephyr) 
banked  the  track  so  completely  out  of  sight  with  sand 
that  a  large  force  of  men  had  to  be  steadily  employed 
in  shoveling  out  trains  that  had  been  brought  to  a 
dead  halt,  and  clearing  a  way  for  the  slow  advance 
of  others.  I  observed  that  the  sides  of  some  of  the 
worst  sand-cuts  had  been  planked  over  to  prevent 
their  sliding  down  upon  the  road.  Occasionally,  the 
sand  blew  in  such  tempests  as  to  sift  through  every 
cranny  of  the  cars,  and  hide  the  river  glimpses  like  a 
momentary  fog.  But  this  discomfort  was  abundantly 
compensated  by  the  wonderfully  interesting  scenery 
on  the  Columbia  side  of  our  train. 

The  river  for  the  whole  distance  of  the  portage  is 
a  succession  of  magnificent  rapids,  low  cataracts,  and 
narrow,  sinuous  channels,  —  the  last  known  to  the 
old  French  traders  as  "  Dales  "  or  "Troughs,"  and  to 
us  by  the  very  natural  corruption  of  "  Dalles."  The 
alternation  between  these  phases  is  wonderfully  ab- 
rupt. At  one  point,  about  half-way  between  Dalles 
City  and  Celilo,  the  entire  volume  of  the  Columbia 
River  (and  how  vast  that  is  may  be  better  under- 
stood by  following  up  on  the  map  the*  river  itself 
and  all  its  tributaries)  is  crowded  over  upon  the  Ore- 
gon shore  through  a  passage  not  more  than  fifty 
yards  in  width,  between  perfectly  naked  and  perpen- 
dicular precipices  of  basalt.  Just  beyond  this  mighty 
mill-race,  where  one  of  the  grandest  floods  of  the 
Continent  is  sliding  in  olive-green  light  and  umber 
shadow,  smoothly  and  resistlessly  as  time,  the  river 
is  a  mile  wide,  and  plunges  over  a  ragged  wall  of 
trap  blocks,  reaching,  as  at  the  lower  cataract,  from 


500      THE  HEART  OF  THE  CONTINENT. 

shore  to  shore.  In  other  neighboring  places  it  attains 
even  a  greater  width,  but  up  to  Celilo  is  never  out  of 
torment  from  the  obstructions  of  its  bed.  Not  even 
the  rapids  of  Niagara  can  vie  with  these  in  their  im- 
pression of  power;  and  only  the  Columbia  itself  can 
describe  the  lines  of  grace  made  by  its  water,  rasped 
to  spray,  churned  to  froth,  tired  into  languid  sheets 
that  flow  like  sliding  glass,  or  shot  up  in  fountains 
frayed  away  to  rainbows  on  their  edges,  as  it  strikes 
some  basalt  hexagon  rising  in  mid-stream.  The  Dalles 
and  the  Upper  Cataracts  are  still  another  region  where 
the  artist  might  stay  for  a  year's  University  course  in 
water-painting. 

At  Celilo  we  found  several  steamers,  in  register 
resembling  our  second  of  the  day  previous.  They 
measured  on  the  average  about  three  hundred  tons. 
One  of  them  had  just  got  down  from  Walla  Walla, 
with  a  large  party  of  miners  from  gold  tracts  still 
further  off,  taking  down  five  hundred  thousand  dol- 
lars in  dust  to  Portland  and  San  Francisco.  We  were 
very  anxious  to  accept  the  Company's  extended  invi- 
tation, and  push  our  investigations  to  or  even  up  the 
Snake  Eiver.  But  the  expectation  that  the  San  Fran- 
cisco steamer  would  reach  Portland  in  a  day  or  two, 
and  that  we  should  immediately  return  by  her  to 
California,  turned  us  most  reluctantly  down  the  river, 
after  we  had  made  the  fullest  notes  and  sketches  a1> 
tainable.  Bad  weather  on  the  coast  falsified  our  ex- 
pectations. For  a  week  we  were  rain-bound  in  Port- 
land, unable  to  leave  our  hotel  for  an  hour  at  a  time 
without  being  drenched  by  the  floods,  which  just  now 
set  in  for  the  winter  season,  and  regretting  the  lack 
of  that  prescience  which  would  have  enabled  us  to 
accomplish  one  of  the  most  interesting  side-trips  in 


ON  THE   COLUMBIA  RIVER.  501 

our  whole  plan  of  travel.  While  this  pleasure  still 
awaited  us,  and  none  in  particular  of  any  kind  seemed 
present  save  the  in-door  courtesies  of  our  Portland 
friends,  it  was  still  among  the  memories  of  a  life-time 
to  have  seen  the  Columbia  in  its  Cataracts  and  its 
Dalles. 


APPENDIX. 


UTAH'S  LIFE  PRINCIPLE  AND  DESTINY. 

THE  great  ecclesiastical  glory  of  Mormonism  is  to  be  the  Temple.  This 
is  now  in  process  of  erection,  but  the  work  is  pushed  very  slowly  —  prob- 
ably with  a  view  to  the  greater  soundness  of  its  foundations,  as  the  other 
reasons  common  in  such  cases,  lack  of  money  and  of  labor,  can  hardly  be 
operative  here, — the  Church  being  enormously  wealthy,  able  to  control 
the  time  of  all  its  disciples,  and  blessed  with  a  male  membership  whose 
large  majority  is  used  to  physical  labor. 

The  basement  of  the  Temple,  as  I  learned  from  a  Mormon  builder,  was 
excavated  several  years  ago,  and  its  foundations  partly  laid,  when  Brighain 
Young  discovered  in  the  work  something  which  dissatisfied  him,  and  had 
it  leveled  to  the  ground.  The  foundations  are  now  well  up  once  more, 
and  the  gigantic  ashlars  are  steadily  coming  in  from  their  quarry  in  the 
canons.  The  stone  used  is  a  handsome  compact  granite,  like  the  Quincy, 
but  even  whiter,  and  in  the  more  ornamental  parts  of  the  superstructure 
will  be  associated  with  marble,  and  that  magnificent  crystalline  limestone, 
traversed  by  veins  of  pure  calc-spar,  which,  in  almost  every  direction 
around  Salt  Lake,  is  found  adjoining  the  metamorphic  strata. 

The  City  is  laid  out  in  the  shape  of  an  L,  whose  upright  points  north  and 
south.  "  Temple  Block  "  is  situated  nearly  in  the  inner  angle  of  this  L. 
On  the  east  Brigham  Young's,  or  "the  Prophet's"  block,  adjoins  it, 
with  a  street  intervening.  Heber  KimbalPs  stands  corner  to  corner  with 
it,  just  north  of  Brigham' s.  That  of  George  Smith  (the  original  prophet's 
cousin,  and  keeper  of  the  sacred  archives)  is  on  the  west  of  it.  Across 
the  street,  on  the  south  of  it,  is  the  Council  House  Block.  On  the  south- 
east is  the  block  occupied  by  Mr.  Wells,  one  of  the  chief  apostles,  and 
third  of  the  three  presidents,  Brigham  and  Heber  l  being  the  others;  the 
History  Office  is  also  on  the  same. 

The  Temple  Block  is  660  feet  square,  its  lines  running  due  north, 
south,  east,  and  west,  its  front  being  on  the  east  The  front  line  of  the 
Temple  is  78  feet  3  inches  from  the  east  line  of  the  block  ;  the  length  of 
the  building,  including  towers  and  pedestal,  will  be  186^  feet,  and  its 
width  118£  feet.  I  was  very  much  surprised  when  I  learned  how  compara- 
tively insignificant  were  the  dimensions  of  a  building  intended  to  be  the 
external  symbol  of  God's  abode  among  men,  and  the  architectural  glory 
of  a  people  whose  sectarian  belief  is  so  closely  identified  with  its  national 

1  Written  before  Heber's  death.  With  this  understanding  none  of  the  essential 
statements  are  affected. 


504  APPENDIX. 

life  as  the  Mormons.  The  foundation  walls,  where  they  reach  the  surface 
of  the  ground,  are  16  feet  wide.  From  the  surface  they  slope  3  feet 
on  each  side  to  the  height  of  1\  feet,  having  thus  on  their  upper  surface 
a  width  of  10  feet.  On  this  base  begins  the  true  wall,  which  is  8  feet 
thick.  Measuring  from  outside  to  outside  of  the  north  and  south  wall,  the 
width  of  the  body  of  the  building  will  be  but  99  feet  —  the  larger  measure- 
ment given  above  including  the  towers,  which  stand  at  each  end  of  the 
east  and  west  side.  Beside  these  towers  at  the  corners,  there  are  two 
others,  at  the  centre  of  the  east  and  west  sides  respectively.  Each  of 
these  towers  has  pedestals  of  the  same  form  and  proportions  as  the  wall, 
built  of  immense  rough  ashlars  laid  in  lime  mortar.  Along  the  north  and 
south  sides  of  the  Temple,  between  the  towers,  the  earth  will  be  sloped 
into  a  glacis,  or  terrace,  6  feet  high  above  the  general  level  of  the  block  ; 
and  on  its  upper  surface  will  begin  a  promenade  with  a  width  varying 
from  11  to  22  feet,  and  reaching  round  the  entire  building,  with  stone 
steps  leading  up  to  it  from  the  lower  level  at  convenient  intervals  along 
the  slope  of  the  glacis.  The  towers  on  the  four  corners  start  from  their 
footing  of  26  feet  square,  continue  to  the  height  of  16^  feet,  where  they 
reach  the  line  of  the  first  string-course,  and  are  reduced  to  25  feet  square. 
They  continue  thus  38  feet  higher  to  the  second  string-course ;  are  then 
reduced  to  23  feet  square,  and  rise  another  distance  of  38  feet  to  the  third 
string-course.  From  this  course  the  corner  towers  become  cylindrical, 
with  an  interior  diameter  of  1 7  feet ;  those  on  the  east  rising  to  the  height 
of  25,  and  those  on  the  west  to  a  height  of  19  feet,  before  they  reach 
their  own  proper  string-pieces,  or  cornices.  From  these  cornices,  on 
all  four  of  them,  rise  battlements  9  feet  high.  The  string-pieces,  save 
where  broken  by  buttresses,  are  continuous  all  round  the  building,  and 
are  massive  mouldings  from  solid  blocks  of  stone.  Each  of  the  corner 
towers  has  on  each  of  its  exposed  sides  two  ornamental  windows  in  their 
25  feet  square  section,  two  in  the  section  23  feet  square,  and  one  in  the 
highest.  The  centre  towers,  on  both  the  east  and  west  ends,  start  31  feet 
square,  but  are  otherwise  of  the  same  proportions  as  the  corner  towers  as 
high  as  the  third  string-piece.  From  that  line  the  east  centre  tower  rises 
40  feet  to  the  top  of  its  battlement,  and  the  west  centre  tower  34  feet,  — 
each  being  thus  6  feet  higher  than  its  adjoining  corner  towers. 

Each  of  the  centre  towers  is,  furthermore,  crowned  with  a  spire ;  the 
spire  of  the  east  tower  rising  to  the  height  of  200,  and  that  of  the 
west  to  190  feet.  All  the  towers  are  ornamented  at  the  corners  of  each 
story  with  pinnacled  turrets,  and  each  side  of  the  towers  is  flanked  by  a 
pair  of  buttresses.  On  the  front  of  each  centre  tower  are  two  windows, 
each  30  feet  high,  set  one  above  the  other.  It  is  expected  that  these  will 
rival  the  finest  abbey  and  cathedral  windows  of  the  Old  World.  They 
will  be  of  the  handsomest  carved  stone-work,  with  stained-glass  panes ; 
and  there  are  among  the  Mormons  one  or  two  artists  in  both  these 
departments,  whose  talents,  judging  from  small  specimens  of  their  work 


APPENDIX.  505 

which  I  saw,  are  really  quite  remarkable.  It  is  the  intention  that  all  the 
labor  and  the  art  expended  on  the  Temple  shall  be  distinctly  indigenous ; 
and  the  pride  which  Brigham  takes  in  all  home  productions  tends  to  the 
constant  development  of  the  very  class  of  abilities  needed  for  this  result. 
The  height  of  the  ridge-pole  of  the  Temple  will  be  about  100  feet. 

The  foundation  of  the  building  looks  more  like  that  of  a  fort  than  of  a 
cathedral.  Not  only  do  the  massive  side  walls,  16  feet  thick  below,  8 
feet  above,  contribute  to  this  impression,  but  the  partitions  also,  of  enor- 
mous ashlars,  by  which  the  basement  is  separated  into  a  multitude  of 
rooms.  In  the  centre  of  the  area  is  the  baptismal  room,  59  feet  long  by 
35  feet  wide,  separated  from  the  main  north  and  south  walls  by  four  rooms, 
two  on  each  side,  each  19  feet  long  by  12  wide.  On  the  east  and  west 
sides  of  these  rooms  are  four  passages,  1 2  feet  wide ;  and  still  further  east 
and  west  four  more  rooms,  two  at  each  end,  28  by  38£  feet.  These  rooms 
are  all  16£  feet  high,  and  are  to  have  elegantly  ornamented  and  groined 
ceilings. 

From  the  basement,  by  stair-ways  in  the  towers,  we  ascend  to  courts  16 
feet  wide,  running  from  tower  to  tower,  and  communicating  by,doors  with 
all  parts  of  the  building.  Out  of  the  front  or  east  court,  a  lofty  door-way 
will  enter  the  principal  room  of  the  Temple,  120  feet  in  length,  80  feet  in 
width,  and  38  feet  in  height  to  the  crown  of  the  ceiling.  The  ceiling  is 
to  be  groined;  its  arches,  segments  of  an  ellipse,  resting  upon  columns 
based  on  the  partition-walls  below.  These  arches  will  meet  in  Ogive 
fashion  at  the  centre,  and  be  as  profusely  ornamented  as  possible  by 
saintly  artificers.  The  space  outside  of  the  columns  supporting  the  arches, 
between  them  and  the  outer  walls,  will  be  divided  into  sixteen  compart- 
ments, eight  on  each  side,  and  14  feet  square,  with  a  passage-way  6  feet 
wide,  running  along  them  the  entire  length  of  the  building  —  each  of  these 
having  in  the  outer  wall  (here  6  feet  thick)  a  large  elliptical  window  with 
the  major  axis  perpendicular. 

The  next  story  is  to  be  precisely  similar,  except  that  the  width  of  its 
large  room  will  be  one  foot  wider  than  that  beneath  it. 

The  ornamentation  of  the  building  is  intended  to  be  symbolical  of  that 
employed  on  the  celestial  courts  above.  Its  plan  is  already  partially 
developed  to  Brigham  by  revelation  through  an  angel,  but  will  be  com- 
municated in  all  its  particulars  only  as  required  during  the  progress  of 
the  work.  The  ungodly  understand  this  arrangement  as  synonymous 
among  their  own  uninspired  class  with  waiting  to  see  how  things  will  look ; 
but  whatever  they  may  say,  I  believe  that  Brother  Brigham  thinks  he 
receives  the  plans  from  an  angel.  If  it  be  really  an  angel,  we  must  arrive 
at  the  painful  conclusion  that  good  taste  is  not  necessarily  included  in 
that  perfection  of  human  nature  which  ensues  on  translation  to  the  celes- 
tial state ;  for  such  an  architectural  hotch-potch  as  that  which  I  have  just 
attempted  to  describe  was  certainly  never  seen  on  earth,  and  must  render 
any  part  of  heaven  where  it  existed  a  very  undesirable  place  of  residence 


506  APPENDIX. 

to  people  of  cultivation.  Among  the  adornments  which  are  to  be  executed 
on  the  exterior  of  the  barbaric  pile  are  the  following,  which  I  quote  from 
the  architect's  own  account  of  his  plan :  — 

"  On  the  two  west  corner  towers,  and  on  the  west  end,  a  few  feet  below 
the  top  of  battlements,  may  be  seen,  in  alto-relievo  and  bold  relief,  the 
Great  Dipper,  or  Ursa  Major,  with  the  pointers  ranging  nearly  toward 
the  North  Star.  (Moral :  The  lost  may  find  themselves  by  the  priest- 
hood.) 

"  The  pedestals  under  all  the  buttresses  project  at  their  base  2  feet ; 
above  their  base,  which  is  15  inches  by  4£  feet  wide,  on  each  front  is  a 
figure  of  a  globe  3  feet  11  inches  across,  whose  axis  corresponds  with 
the  axis  of  the  earth. 

"  Above  the  promenade,  close  under  the  second  string-course  on  each 
of  the  buttresses,  is  the  moon  represented  in  its  different  phases.  Close 
under  the  third  string-course  or  cornice  is  the  face  of  the  sun.  Immedi- 
ately above  is  Saturn  with  his  rings. 

"  The  only  difference  between  the  tower  buttresses  and  the  one  just 
described  is,  instead  of  Saturn  being  on  them,  we  have  clouds  and  rays  of 
light  descending. 

"  All  of  these  symbols  are  to  be  chiseled  in  bass-relief  on  solid  stone. 
The  side  walls  continue  above  the  string-course  or  cornice  8|  feet,  mak- 
ing the  walls  96  feet  high,  and  are  formed  in  battlements  interspersed 
with  stars. 

"  The  whole  house  covers  an  area  of  21,850  feet." 

While  this  portentous  structure  is  getting  ready  to  surprise,  if  not  to 
scare,  the  nations,  the  Mormons  residing  in  the  City  of  Salt  Lake  worship 
in  cool  or  cold  weather  at  "  The  Tabernacle,"  and  in  the  dog-days  at 
"  The  Bowery." 

The  Tabernacle  is.  situated  on  the  southwest  corner  of  Temple  Block. 
It  is  a  building  of  the  sun-dried  bricks  or  adobe  in  such  universal  use 
throughout  the  western  half  of  the  Continent,  —  having  its  principal 
entrance  in  the  southern  gable,  which  fronts  on  the  same  street  as 
Brigham  Young's.  Its  length  is  126  feet,  its  width  64  ;  and  its  height  so 
disproportionately  small  as  not  only  to  give  it  a  very  squat  appearance, 
which  its  absence  of  pretension  and  temporariness  of  purpose  make  a 
matter  of  no  consequence,  but  to  render  it  almost  stifling  when  the  July 
sun  pours  down  on  it,  —  a  matter  which,  to  the  2,200  people  whom  it 
can  seat  at  a  pinch,  is  of  very  great  consequence  indeed.  With  the  first 
extremely  hot  weather,  therefore,  Sunday  religion  moves  its  quarters  to 
"  The  Bowery,"  a  structure  like  the  booths  of  the  ancient  Israelites,  or,  to 
descend  for  illustration  into  an  atmosphere  more  recent  and  familiar,  like 
the  arbors  which  used  to  be  in  vogue  at  many  of  our  sea-side  watering- 
places,  and  are  still  to  be  seen  fronting  some  hotels  at  Long  Branch  and 
at  Fire  Island —  a  scaffolding  of  rough  tree  trunks  the  diameter  of  a  tele- 
graph pole  set  firmly  in  the  ground,  ten  or  twenty  feet  apart,  braced 


APPENDIX.  507 

together  by  equally  rough  string-pieces  at  the  top,  and  covered  with 
successive  layers  of  boughs  green  at  first,  but  dried  to  parchment  by  the 
end  of  August,  felted  into  each  other,  so  to  speak,  until  they  are  quite 
impervious  to  the  sun.  Rain  in  Utah  there  is  but  too  little  need  of  pro- 
viding against.  The  only  "  fair-weather  Christian "  must  be  a  cool- 
weather  one.  The  outer  line  of  posts,  in  the  Bowery,  includes  a  nearly 
equilateral  area  of  about  14,000  square  feet,  situated  due  north  of  the 
Tabernacle,  and  like  it,  on  the  Temple  Block.  I  should  judge  it  capable, 
without  difficulty,  of  accommodating  somewhere  near  4,000  persons. 
Its  seats  are  rude  pine  benches,  some  with  backs,  others  backless,  and 
provided,  by  the  more  luxurious  members  of  the  congregation,  with  hair 
or  cornshuck  cushions.  On  the  inner  posts  hang  kerosene  lamps  for  use 
during  the  second  Sunday  service,  which  is  held  in  the  evening  through 
the  summer  months  at  least,  the  afternoon  being  devoted  to  Sunday- 
school.  A  platform  in  length  and  breadth  equaling  the  stage  of  a  good- 
sized  theatre,  occupies  about  half  of  the  northern  side  (the  middle  of  the 
stage  coinciding  with  the  middle  of  the  side),  and  affords  rather  more 
sumptuous  seats  than  those  of  the  auditorium  (cane  settees  and  chairs 
when  I  attended  service)  to  a  score  or  more  of  the  principal  men  of 
Mormondom.  The  only  approach  to  a  pulpit  is  a  plain  drawing-room 
table,  on  which  lie  the  Bible,  the  Book  of  Mormon,  and  the  Latter-Day 
Saint's  Hymn  Book,  flanked  by  a  pitcher  of  water  and  a  tumbler. 

On  visiting  the  Bowery  at  the  hour  of  beginning  morning  service, 
about  half-past  ten,  as  usual  in  most  of  our  Eastern  churches,  I  found  the 
seats  already  well  filled,  but  obtained  a  good  position  by  the  politeness  of 
Brigham's  son-in-law,  Mr.  Clawson.  A  pleasanter  place  to  attend  service 
in  could  hardly  be  imagined.  The  uninterrupted  passage  through  the 
leafy  covering  of  a  delicious  mountain  breeze,  whose  edge,  acquired  by 
gliding  over  the  hone  of  the  perpetual  snow,  had  been  tempered  just  to  a 
nicety  by  the  sunshine  of  a  cloudless  summer  sky,  made  fans  entirely 
unnecessary;  and  the  liberty  of  the  Gospel  was  broadly  enough  con- 
strued to  admit  of  several  bronzed  agricultural  saints  near  me  sitting  in 
the  spotless  freshness  of  snowy  shirt-sleeves.  The  ladies  were  generally 
attired  in  airy  muslin  dresses  without  any  over  garment,  except  in  a  few 
scattered  instances,  where  a  black  silk  mantilla  indicated  some  member  of 
the  Mormon  aristocracy;  and  the  children,  who  were  present  in  large 
number,  were,  with  striking  good  taste,  dressed  comfortably  rather  than 
ostentatiously  —  a  course  worthy  of  imitation  at  the  East,  and  likely,  if 
adopted,  to  increase  greatly  the  number  of  youthful  Christians  who  can 
say  without  hypocrisy,  — 

"  I  have  been  there,  and  still  would  go: 
'Tis  like  a  little  heaven  below." 

The  stage  was  occupied  by  nine  or  ten  dignitaries  of  the  Church,  among 
whom  I  recognized  that  stalwart  pillar,  Brother  Heber,  Dr.  Bernhisel, 
and  a  very  pleasant-looking  man,  a  bishop,  to  whom  I  had  been  intro- 


508  APPENDIX. 

duced  during  the  week.  His  name  now  escapes  me,  but  I  shall  always 
recollect  his  face  as  expressing  more  genuine  benevolence  of  nature, 
sincerity,  and  good  sense  than  any  I  saw  in  Utah,  except  Brigham's. 

The  exercises  opened  with  a  hymn  given  out  by  Dr.  Bernhisel,  and  sung 
by  the  whole  congregation  with  abundant  fervor,  under  the  leading  of  a 
small  choir  near  the  stage,  accompanied  by  a  melodeon  and  a  violin. 
The  tune  was  old  familiar  Ward,  and  in  the  words  of  the  hymn  was 
nothing  which  could  shock  the  most  fastidiously  orthodox  of  Gentiles. 

Some  of  the  hymns  in  the  collection  are  very  curious  specimens  of  sa- 
cred and  secular  rapture  commingled,  as  if  the  altar  fire  had  been  lighted 
with  a  coal  from  the  kitchen-range  of  daily  life.  One,  with  which  I 
became  acquainted  on  another  occasion,  beginning  "  Upper  California  — 

0  !  that's  the  land  for  me  ! "  (written  in  the  early  days  of  the  Mormon 
exodus  westward,  when  California  included  what  is  noAv  Nevada,  and  the 
Mormons  had  founded  several  settlements  along  the  Sierra),  was  sung  to 
an  adaptation  of  the  ancient  negro  favorite,  "  O  Susannah  !  don't  you  cry 
for  me,"  and  contained  a  vivid  description  as  well  as  eulogy  of  the  agri- 
cultural blessings  ensuing  to  immigrants.     It  sounded  like  a  melodious 
prospectus  of  some  new  township,  with  religious  and  water  privileges,  the 
advantage  of  the  Christians  and  the  ten-acre  lot  treated  in  the  same 
access  of  religious  spasmody.     One  jumble  particularly  entertained  me  —  it 
went  something  like  this  :  — 

"  Where  the  blessing  of  Jehovah  is  poured  out  on  Jacob's  line, 
And  the  mountains  all  are  flowing  with  milk  and  honey,  and  saints  and  wine." 

1  am  not  sure  that  I  quote  the  couplet  precisely,  except  the  last  line,  but 
that  is  correct,  and  the  only  part  of  consequence  to  the  fun  of  the  thing. 

After  the  hymn,  the  bishop  of  whom  I  have  spoken  made  an  extempore 
prayer.  It  was,  as  I  should  have  expected,  a  plain,  straightforward,  hon- 
est-hearted appeal  to  the  Divine  Being  for  forgiveness  of  sins,  and  thanks- 
giving for  the  temporal  blessings  bestowed  on  the  saintly  community.  At 
its  conclusion,  I  was  disappointed  not  to  see  Brigham  rise  to  address  us, 
but  he  had  come  in  the  week  before  from  making  an  apostolic  tour 
throughout  the  southern  settlements,  where  he  had  averaged  one  speech 
a  day,  sometimes  talking  in  the  open  air,  and  had  a  good  excuse  for  rest- 
ing his  voice  to-day.  Heber  had  been  out  too  —  accompanying  Brother 
Brigham  through  his  circuit,  and  playing  Silas  to  his  Paul  everywhere. 
But  Heber  was  a  perfect  Boanerges,  as  well  as  a  Silas,  and  his  thunder- 
ous utterances  no  more  tired  him  than  the  work  of  keeping  the  small  coal 
lively  tires  the  leathern  lungs  which  tradition  makes  it  a  part  of  his  ear- 
lier manhood's  career  to  have  operated  alternately  with  the  sledge  and 
cold  chisel.  He  needed  no  rest,  and  accordingly  gave  us  an  address. 
This  time  it  lacked  one  of  those  Heberistic  characters  which  make  his 
sermons  as  popular  among  the  ungodly  as  Burton  was  in  his  best  days  — 
and  popular  after  a  fashion  even  still  less  congruous  with  Sunday  and 


APPENDIX.  509 

sanctities  than  " Forty  Winks "  or  the  "  Thousand  Milliners"  It  was 
not  indecent.  I  confess  that  I  felt  my  curiosity  disappointed  while  my 
good  taste  and  ethical  sense  were  relieved,  for  I  had  braced  myself  to 
stand  any  amount  of  deviation  from  the  line  usually  followed  by  preachers, 
whether  as  regards  subject  selected  or  treatment  employed.  In  his  pri- 
vate conversation,  as  I  had  many  occasions  of  noticing,  Heber  granted 
himself  the  largest  latitude  of  reference  to  matters  which  are  usually  ta- 
booed, or,  if  mentioned  of  necessity,  only  behind  the  screen  of  friendship's 
most  intimate  privacy ;  and  of  substituting  for  the  euphuisms  and  cir- 
cumlocutions in  which  such  friendship  mentions  them,  the  very  baldest 
and  boldest  literalities  of  speech.  Without  resorting  to  the  old-fashioned 
pedantry  of  putting  such  conversation  into  a  Latin  note  (as  if  Juvenal 
and  Apuleius  had  set  moderns  the  example  of  using  their  native  speech 
for  a  cesspool  of  baleful  immoralities  that  could  not  flow  exposed  to  com- 
mon view  down  the  channels  of  our  sunlit  Saxon),  I  cannot  report  the 
second  President's  habitual  style  of  talking.  It  is  sufficient  to  say  that 
all  subjects  which,  by  the  common  consent  of  civilized  communities  in 
this  age,  are  wholly  withdrawn  from  the  currency  of  talk,  were  his  most 
favorite  and  habitual  topics  of  conversation  ;  indeed,  I  never  saw  any  man 
who  had  known  him  a  day  without  learning  his  opinions  upon  some  one 
of  these  subjects,  or  hearing  him  refer  to  them  in  the  most  unvarnished 
terms  and  with  a  peculiar  lickerish  relish.  He  is  as  audacious  on  the 
platform  as  he  is  in  the  parlor.  I  never  should  have  believed  possible 
the  reports  I  have  read  and  heard  of  his  speeches,  had  they  not  been 
authenticated  to  me  by  the  consenting  testimony  of  numerous  most  re- 
spectable and  unbiased  men  present  on  the  occasions  when  they  were 
delivered —  still  more  by  my  own  ear-witness  of  identical  language  used 
in  private.  Heber's  favorite  audience  is  one  largely  consisting  of. "  the 
beloved  sisters,"  and  to  this  he  expatiates  by  the  hour  after  a  fashion 
which  would  crimson  the  cheeks  of  an  assembly  of  Camilles  not  utterly 
lost  to  the  memories  of  a  pure  home  and  childhood.  No  more  over- 
whelming proof  can  be  offered  for  Mormonism's  degradation  of  the  mar- 
riage tie  and  its  extinction  of  man's  chivalric  feelings  of  respect  and  pro- 
tection toward  woman,  than  the  fact  that  men  of  refined,  gentlemanly, 
and  scholarly  antecedents,  like  Dr.  Bernhisel,  for  instance,  can  hear  one 
of  their  own  sex  talk  in  public  to  their  sisters,  mothers,  daughters,  and 
wives,  upon  the  most  private  subjects  in  the  most  blatant  way,  and  not 
tear  him  in  pieces  where  he  stands. 

On  this  particular  occasion,  Heber  disappointed  the  morbid  curiosity 
of  such  Gentiles  as  had  gone  to  the  Bowery  to  hear  something  improper, 
unless,  indeed,  their  tastes  were  so  simple  that  disloyalty  satisfied  them. 
Heber  took  no  text,  but  his  address  was  directed  at  the  California  regi- 
ments under  Colonel  (now  General)  Connor,  lying  camped  on  the  first 
rise  toward  the  Wahsatch  Canons,  about  three  miles  out  of  the  city,  and 
admirably  well  posted  to  command  it,  either  as  an  army  of  observation,  or 


510  APPENDIX. 

in  a  strategic  point  of  view.  Heber  did  not  like  to  have  them  there ; 
their  presence  was  an  insult  to  the  Mormon  Government ;  they  were 
there  ostensibly  for  the  purpose  of  protecting  immigration  and  the  mails 
against  the  Utes,  the  rebel  split  from  Washki's  Shoshones,  the  Pi- 
utes,  the  Go-shoots,  and  other  hostile  Indians  of  the  Range  and  Desert ; 
but  the  no  less  important  function  they  were  there  to  discharge,  and  the 
Mormons  knew  it,  was  the  protection  of  United  States  officials,  and  the 
preservation  of  at  least  a  semblance  of  United  States  authority,  in  oppo- 
sition to  the  Mormons  themselves.  From  the  roof  of  the  Opera  House 
their  white  line  of  tents  could  be  seen  plainly  beyond  the  rich  green 
foliage  that  embowered  the  city,  extending  like  a  flock  of  snowy  storks  lit 
in  a  broad  high  meadow  to  rest  on  their  way  across  the  Continent ;  and 
in  this  view  were  a  charmingly  picturesque  set  of  objects.  But  unlike 
the  poetical  and  migratory  birds  which  they  resembled,  they  were  not 
harmless  in  their  manners  nor  temporary  in  their  sojourn.  They  were 
there  to  enforce  taxes  and  drafts,  if  such  were  resisted ;  to  see  that  the 
Territorial  Governor  received  respect,  and  Gentiles  got  even-handed  jus- 
tice in  lawsuits  with  saints,  through  the  medium  of  inviolable  United 
States  courts  ;  they  were  there  in  fulfillment  of  Uncle  Sam's  constitu- 
tional pledge  to  sustain  all  his  nephews  in  the  enjoyment  of  a  republican 
form  of  government.  Their  preparation  for  the  maintenance  of  all  these 
rights  and  causes  was  of  the  meagrest  —  a  couple  of  howitzers  perhaps, 
and  half  a  dozen  little  field-pieces,  the  heaviest  carrying  only  a  twelve- 
pound  ball.  But  the  men  behind  the  guns  were  the  true  batteries. 
Though  they  might  eventually  be  overwhelmed  by  numbers,  —  in  fact, 
must  be,  if  smouldering  hostility  ever  broke  forth  into  belligerent  flame, — 
they  would  burn  down  the  city  first,  and  serve  their  cannon  till  the  last 
round  was  exhausted;  then,  making  their  extirpation  the  costliest  job  the 
Mormons  ever  undertook,  die  in  their  first  tracks  on  a  mound  of  their 
fallen  enemies.  They  were  old  Californian  grizzly  hunters,  men  that  had 
crossed  the  heaven-piercing  barriers,  and  slid  down  the  soul-dismaying 
precipices  of  the  Sierra  Nevada  on  snow-shoes ;  old  Indian-fighters,  pros- 
pecters,  forty-niners,  and  vigilance  committee  men  —  men  who  knew 
Fear  by  name,  but  had  never  shaken  hands  with  him.  Thrice  or  more 
had  Brother  Brigham  prayed  that  these  buffeting  messengers  might  depart 
from  him;  but  Uncle  Sam  had  answered  him  as  a  higher  power  an- 
swered the  other  apostle,  thus  far,  however,  omitting  to  give  him  grace 
sufficient  to  bear  them.  They  wanted  to  be  there,  curious  to  say,  as 
little  as  Brother  Brigham  wanted  to  have  them.  They  had  enlisted  at 
the  very  outbreak  of  the  Rebellion,  with  the  understanding  that  they  were 
to  go  east  and  south  to  fight  the  battles  of  the  Union  ;  with  most  of  them, 
I  believe,  it  was  an  express  stipulation.  Judge  of  their  chagrin  when 
they  found  themselves  compelled  to  settle  down  in  their  present  life  of 
inglorious  ease  under  the  Wahsatch  —  their  only  smell  of  powder  coming 
in  skirmishes  with  Indians ;  the  employment  of  their  seething  energies 


APPENDIX.  511 

limited  to  this  cat-watching-a-mouse-hole  kind  of  business ;  the  whole 
gigantic  sell  resulting  from  the  government's  changing  its  mind  as  to  the 
economy  of  giving  them  transportation  to  the  Potomac,  without  allowing 
them  to  change  their  minds  as  to  the  validity  of  their  enrollment.  But 
though  they  grumbled  (in  fact,  I  don't  know  but  it  would  be  more  accu- 
rate to  say,  all  the  more  because  they  did  grumble),  they  were  as  stanch 
and  formidable  defenders  as  the  Union  could  have  had  in  Utah. 

Heber  told  his  audience  that  they  must  cultivate  feelings  of  Christian 
forgiveness  to  the  blue-coat  sojer-men ;  they  were  all  poor  critters  that 
had  to  do  what  they  were  bid,  and  probably  none  of  them  would  keer,  of 
their  own  accord,  to  be  sticking  their  noses  into  the  business  of  other  peo- 
ple, and  be  spyin'  and  smellin'  around  a  community  of  honest,  industrious, 
respectable  people  that  hadn't  never  done  'em  no  harm  inowayshaper- 
manner.  I  don't  know  that  Heber  regarded  this  adverbial  phrase  as  a 
single  word,  but  he  always  pronounced  it  so.  Poor  critters  !  he  contin- 
ued, —  with  a  sigh  of  such  peculiar  pathos  that  one  felt  he  would  like  to 
eat  them  to  put  them  out  of  their  misery,  — how  could  they  know  that  the 
time  was  comin'  when  they  would  call  on  the  Wahsatch  to  cover  them, 
and  the  devouring  flames  of  the  Lord  should  roast  them  till  the  flesh 
sizzled  on  their  bones,  and  they  should  cry  out  for  Death  to  come ;  but 
Death  wouldn't  have  nothin'  to  do  with  their  lousy  carcases,  any  more'n 
you  or  I,  brethren  'n  sisters,  would  touch  a  lump  o'  cowyard  manure  when 
we'd  just  washed  our  hands  to  go  to  meetin'.  Little  good  then  would 
their  shoddy  coats  do  'em ;  the  devil,  who  had  a  mortgage  on  them  and 
the  contractors  that  made  'em,  wasn't  scared  at  blue  jackets  and  United 
States  buttons.  He  did  sincerely  hope  to  see  the  day,  brethren  'n  sisters, 
when  they  might  all  be  licked  clean  up  as  the  small  dust  of  the  balance, 
'n  not  one  stone  left  upon  another ;  but  till  then  it  was  their  duty  to  in- 
dulge a  sperrit  of  Christian  forgiveness.  O  yes  !  them  and  their  wives 
and  their  little  ones,  though  they  whirled  'em  around  on  their  bayonets 
and  stamped  the  blood  of  their  prophets  in  the  dust,  until  the  terrible  day 
of  the  Lord  should  come,  and  the  Saints  could  sit  under  their  own  vine 
and  fig-tree  with  none  to  molest  'em  or  make  'em  afraid.  He  was  a 
friend  to  'em  himself —  he  was.  He  didn't  want  to  see  'em  ripped  open 
and  torn  to  pieces  with  just  wrath  like  a  gutted  catfish.  He  pitied  them, 
for  he  thought  of  the  day  when  the  oppressed  would  hev  to  rise  agin  'em 
and  drive  the  last  footprint  of  the  tyrant  from  the  soil  God  had  given  to  His 
people.  He  pitied  the  people  of  the  States,  all  on  'em.  They  were  fightin' 
their  brethren  for  the  sake  of  the  niggers.  Talk  of  niggers  !  Where 
were  there  miserabler  niggers  than  the  poor  slaves  that  followed  the  fan- 
atic Abolitionist  leaders  at  the  North  ?  They  didn't  dare  to  say  their  soul 
was  their  own  ;  they  had  to  go  and  fight  their  brethren  and  get  licked  — 
they  always  were  licked  like  hell,  and  he  thanked  God  for  it ;  everybody 
ought  to  that  went  into  other  people's  premises  and  tried  to  break  up 
their  family  arrangements  ;  and  slavery  was  a  family  arrangement  just  as 


512  APPENDIX. 

much  as  ours,  brethren  and  sisters.  They  had  to  follow  their  leaders  like 
sheep  over  a  stone  wall,  and  get  butchered  like  sheep  by  the  thousands 
and  thousands  ;  but,  thank  God,  the  thing  was  pretty  nigh  played  out, 
and  before  long  we'd  see  it.  The  Union  was  all  gone  to  hell ;  there 
wouldn't  be  enough  left  in  a  few  days  to  bury  its  carcase  decently.  There 
never  could  be  any  such  thing  as  a  reunion ;  henceforth  and  forever  the 
North  and  South  were  two  separate  nations,  and  the  South  were  much 
the  better  fellows  of  the  two.  If  he  had  been  East  at  the  breaking  out  of 
the  rebellion,  —  as  the  Abolitionists  called  the  Southerners'  trying  to  keep 
them  from  stealing  their  niggers,  ravishing  their  wives,  and  murdering 
their  old  men  and  babies,  —  he  would  have  shouldered  his  musket  and 
marched  down  to  help  those  brave  fellows,  the  Southerners  —  you  bet ! 
But  they  didn't  need  any  help  ;  they  had  no  more  to  do  than  they  could 
attend  to.  What  was  faith  ?  It  was  knowledge  that  the  Lord  God  Om- 
nipotent reigneth.  It  was  a  belief  that  things  would  come  to  pass.  Now, 
did  we,  brethren  and  sisters,  believe  that  things  would  come  to  pass  ? 
That  the  proud  enemy  would  be  destroyed,  yea,  smitten,  until  they  that 
were  in  the  uttermost  isles  should  be  proud  of  his  tokens,  and  Lebanon 
should  not  be  sufficient  for  a  burnt-offering  thereof  ?  Had  we  that  ?  He 
hoped  we  had,  though  there  were  some  that  hung  down  their  feeble  knees. 
This  was  a  great  day  —  there  was  no  doubt  but  the  Lord  was  moving. 
He  pulled  up  a  new  peg  and  sot  down  a  new  peg  every  day.  If  we  had 
not  faith  that  brother  Brigham,  if  necessary,  could  be  inspired  by  the 
Lord  to  tumble  Ensign  Peak  into  Salt  Lake  —  and  we  might  live  to  see 
greater  wonders  than  that,  only  we  hardened  our  hearts  as  in  the  day  of 
provocation  —  we  had  no  show  for  heaven  at  all.  It  was  a  grain  of  mus- 
tard-seed, but  it  filled  the  whole  earth.  Wasn't  that  a  miracle  ?  But 
His  arm  is  not  shortened.  He  was  sorry  to  see  that  faith  was  waxing 
cold.  Some  of  the  young  sisters  needed  a  sort  of  stirring  up  —  the  breth- 
ren too  were  drowsy  —  he  wasn't  talking  about  the  hot  weather,  though 
it  was  so  hot  he  guessed  he'd  take  a  drink  (took  a  drink  and  wiped  his 
mouth  on  his  cuff)  — it  would  be  hotter  yet,  and  no  drinks  neither,  if 
they  didn't  yearn  inwardly  and  seek  the  kingdom.  Where  was  he  ?  O 
yes  — -  stirring  up  —  till  they  should  cry  hosannah  —  with  a  sharp  gad  — 
a  ten-foot  pole,  as  he  might  say  of  gospel  truth  and  exhortation  —  until 
they  should  repent  and  do  their  first  works.  Why,  when  they  first  come 
out  here,  weren't  there  lots  of  'em  that  were  glad  enough  of  a  peck  o'  yel- 
low meal  to  keep  themselves,  and  their  wives,  and  their  little  ones  from 
starving,  and  now  they  were  riding  around  in  their  spring  wagons,  and 
old  Buck  and  Bright  that  drew  the  Ark  of  their  Covenant,  their  family 
ark,  not  built  out  of  shittim  wood,  but  ash  and  hemlock,  across  from  the 
States  —  they  were  changed  off  for  two-forty  nags,  and  everything  was 
to  cut  a  dash  ;  but  what  they  had  gained  in  this  respect  (here  he  adopted 
the  famous  gesture  made  by  Everett  in  his  "  Washington  "  address,  and 
slapped  his  breeches  pocket  till  the  chink  rang),  was  more'n  lost  by  the 


APPENDIX.  513 

Tallin'  off  in  sperritooality.  But  he  guessed  that  what  he'd  said-would 
bear  fruit,  and  if  it  didn't  he  wa'n't  to  blame  —  he  had  done  his  dooty, 
and  now  he  guessed  he'd  wind  up.  He  hadn't  made  a  speech  to  edifica- 
tion ekil  to  brother  Brigham's,  but  he  was  a  horse  of  another  color,  and 
there  was  plenty  in  what  he'd  said,  any  way,  to  bring  'em  into  the  king- 
dom ;  leastways,  if  he  couldn't  carry  'em  slap  in,  up  and  through,  to  give 
'em  a  saving  hist  any  how,  and  might  the  Lord  bless  'em  all,  forever  and 
ever,  amen  ! 

After  Brother  Heber's  sermon  was  concluded,  we  had  another  hymn  sung 
with  great  earnestness,  for  it  was  set  to  the  tune  of  the  "  Star  Spangled 
Banner,"  and  there  was  enough  of  the  American  element  present  to  tinge 
the  whole  audience  with  enthusiasm  despite  the  chuckling  disloyalty  of 
Heber.  It  is  hard  for  Uncle  Sam's  prodigals  to  forget  the  old  man ;  Joe 
Smith  does  not  seem  to  take  his  place  at  all ;  and  all  the  American  Mor- 
mons outside  the  governing  class,  feel  a  sneaking  thrill  for  the  liberty 
pole  and  the  spread  eagle.  One  Sunday  night  a  party  of  Conner's  blue- 
coats  got  leave  to  come  into  service  at  the  Bowery.  The  Mormon  choir 
happened  to  select  for  one  of  their  hymns  that  evening,  this  same  tune, 
dear  to  patriotic  hearts,  and  voices  of  2£  octaves  compass.  The  boys  who 
occupied  a  seat  in  the  back  part  of  the  "  Meetin'  "  had  listened  attentively 
to  all  the  preceding  service  —  had  borne  good-humoredly  the  invariable 
diatribes  against  the  Government  which  formed  the  staple  of  Mormon 
sermons  ;  and  had  conducted  themselves  with  the  utmost  decency,  in 
accordance  with  Connor's  orders,  to  avoid  all  cause  of  quarrel  with  the 
Saints,  until  the  Mormons  began  to  sing  the  national  air.  At  first  they 
found  outlet  for  their  enthusiasm  in  joining  the  music,  but  soon  found 
they  did  not  fadge  with  the  regular  attendants  on  the  sanctuary.  Not 
being  favorite  visitors,  they  had  received  from  nobody  the  courtesy  of  a 
hymn-book ;  and  not  being  acquainted  with  the  hymn,  they  sang  Key's 
original  words  as  they  had  learned  them  in  camp.  Having  good  out-door 
voices  of  their  own,  valuable  rather  for  strength  than  skill  in  ritenuto 
and  piano  passages,  they  soon  smothered  the  sacred  under  the  profane 
lyric,  and  became  aware  by  ominous  scowls  from  the  surrounding  benches 
that  they  were  disturbing  the  worship  of  the  sanctuary.  Always  desir- 
ous to  keep  the  general  peace,  they  forthwith  held  their  own,  contenting 
themselves  with  such  relief  to  overcharged  nervous  systems  as  might  be 
afforded  by  beating  time  with  their  feet  and  fingers.  Just  as  the  choir 
finished  the  last  verse,  their  ecstasy  becoming  incontrollable,  burst  forth  in 
a  volley  of  applause  mingled  with  hurrahs.  This  was  the  feather  which 
produced  dorsal  fracture  in  the  Mormon  camel.  "  Young  men  !  "  said  a 
venerable  bishop,  sternly,  from  the  rostrum,  "  you  forget  that  you  are  in 
the  house  of  the  Lord."  "  Not  a  bit  of  it,  ole  hoss,"  one  of  the  boys 
"  spoke  right  out  in  meetin' ."  "  What  in  thunder  diye  want  to  sing  such 
all-fired  nice  tunes  for,  if  you  want  a  feller  to  sit  still  and  bust  himself?  " 
On  the  present  occasion  there  were  none  of  the  blue-coats  present  and 
33 


514  APPENDIX. 

nobody  "bust  himself,"  but  after  the  hymn  an  elderly  gentleman  (of 
sixty,  perhaps,  or  thereabouts)  rose  and  approached  the  (more  or  less) 
sacred  desk.  He  was  of  good  height  and  had  had  no  quarrel  with  his 
cook.  His  weight  might  have  been  two  hundred  ;  his  general  complex- 
ion was  a  cool  permanent  pink  which  shaded  artistically  into  the  warmer 
Magentesque  tinge  of  a  large,  generously  nourished,  and  globularly  termi- 
nated nose.  His  clothes  were  that  gray  homespun  which  told  of  a  Pene- 
lope among  his  wives  ;  and  it  was  right  he  should  have  one,  for  in  some 
respects  he  was  the  "  iro\vp.r]Tis  OSvcraevs,"  the  many  counseled  Ulysses  of 
Mormonism.  He  was  the  historian  and  keeper  of  the  sacred  archives, 
the  cousin  of  the  martyr  Prophet  and  Revelator  Joseph  —  George  Smith. 
He  wore  a  pair  of  silver  mounted  spectacles ;  and  his  hair,  which  was 
rapidly  turning  white,  hung  in  long,  flossy  strands  from  about  a  forehead 
whose  slippery  shine  and  intellectual  height  and  bumpiness  reminded 
me  of  Patriarch  Casby  in  "  Little  Dorrit,"  while  it  suggested  for  its  reful- 
gence a  supernatural  explanation.  Among  prophets  and  seers  we  cannot 
expect  to  see  heads  crowned  with  festal  wreaths,  —  "  Caput  nitidum 
non  licet  impedire  myrto "  (although  the  nose  did  look  secular  and 
temporal)  ;  but  this  good  man's  polished  poll  might  perchance  be  ac- 
counted for  by  the  glaze  naturally  consequent  upon  the  habitual  resting 
on  it  of  saintly  halos  and  tongues  of  fire. 

Mr.  Smith  spoke  very  well.  I  don't  know  how  much  inspiration  is 
claimed  for  the  Apostles  who  speak  on  Sunday,  but  if  he  was  not  in- 
spired he  did  not  seem  to  miss  it,  for  much  that  goes  by  the  name  is  in- 
ferior to  his  sermon  in  good  sense  and  interest.  He  reviewed  the  Mor- 
mon past  in  a  vigorous  sketchy  way,  contrasting  it  with  the  present,  to 
show  how  manifestly  the  Saints  had  been  the  peculiar  care  of  Providence, 
and  how  much  cause  they  had  for  encouragement  regarding  the  future- 
His  references  to  the  early  persecution  of  the  sect  were  remarkably  tem- 
perate. I  was  surprised  to  find  in  the  representative  of  a  family  which  had 
suffered  more  than  any  other  among  the  Mormons  from  the  rancor  of  the 
Gentiles,  altogether  the  calmest  spirit  manifested  by  any  Saint  I  heard 
broach  the  subject.  His  mood  was  humorous  and  hopeful,  and  when  he 
concluded  his  speech  his  audience  were  all  smiles  and  cheerfulness.  One 
of  the  bishops  then  made  a  prayer ;  and  after  singing  another  hymn  the 
congregation  dispersed. 

George  Smith's  reference  to  the  persecution  of  the  Saints  revived  in  my 
mind  the  memory  of  facts  without  taking  which  into  account  it  is  impos- 
sible to  do  justice  to  the  Mormon  people.  We  see  their  polygamy,  their 
disloyalty,  their  cruelty  to  immigrants  passing  through  Utah  on  the  way 
to  California,  and  they  become  mere  devils  to  us,  without  one  bright  spot 
in  the  character,  one  atom  of  palliation  for  their  spirit  and  their  deeds. 
They  are  a  people  apart  from  the  rest  of  mankind  —  not  governed  by  the 
ordinary  laws  of  human  nature  —  vindictive,  treacherous,  blood-thirsty, 
wholly  bad.  Even  among  the  wildest,  most  reckless  of  the  neighboring 


APPENDIX.  515 

frontiersmen,  among  persons  claiming  neither  morals  nor  religion  of  their 
own,  the  Mormons  are  spoken  of  as  a  distinct  race  of  beings,  possessing 
the  craftiness  of  the  fox,  the  ferocity  of  the  bloodhound,  the  salacity  of 
the  baboon,  and  the  absence  of  all  principle  which  characterizes  the 
brute  creation.  One  of  the  worst  men  that  I  met  between  the  Missouri 
River  and  the  Pacific  spoke  to  me  of  them  with  a  shudder,  as  an  area 
thief  would  speak  of  a  murderer.  People  living  east  of  the  Wahsatch 
talked  of  them  with  bated  breath,  if  indeed  they  mentioned  them  at  all 
—  then  only  after  searching  scrutiny  of  me,  and  glancing  in  every  direc- 
tion to  see  if  one  of  their  lurking  spies  might  not  chance  to  be  within 
earshot.  The  Gentile  settlers  in  the  mountains  seemed  to  have  more 
fear  of  them  than  of  the  Indians  at  their  worst. 

I  am  inclined  to  think  that  this  reputation  is  not  so  much  an  annoyance 
as  a  satisfaction  to  the  Mormons.  It  is  not  the  mere  result  of  atrocities 
which  they  have  committed,  though  some  of  these,  like  the  Mountain 
Meadow  massacre,  are  well  calculated  to  strike  terror  into  every  Gentile 
heart ;  but  part  of  the  Mormon  strategic  system,  invented  and  carried  out 
in  all  its  manifold  complications  by  that  longest-headed  of  men,  Brigham 
Young.  He  knows  that  in  some  cases  not  only  a  good,  but  a  bad  name, 
is  better  than  riches.  The  current  knowledge  that  a  man  can  snuff  a 
candle  with  his  Derringer,  or  has  repeatedly  killed  his  man  on  the  "  field 
of  honor,"  saves  him  many  an  insult  and  many  an  encounter.  Under  the 
protection  of  a  reputation  for  massacres,  Brigham  is  aware  that  his  people 
may  sheathe  the  bowie-knife,  and  attend  to  the  development  of  their 
country's  more  peaceful  resources.  He  chuckles  to  think  how  his  buga- 
boo keeps  the  children  out  of  the  sweetmeats'-closet,  and  his  Guy  frightens 
the  cows  from  his  corn.  Utah  needs  all  the  labor  she  can  possibly  get  in 
her  thirsty  fields  and  her  wooded  canons  ;  in  her  infant  shops  and  manu- 
factories ;  on  her  mines  of  useful  and,  in  some  privately  known  localities, 
of  precious  metal ;  on  her  road  making,  her  city  building,  and  the  founda- 
tions of  her  Temple.  Every  man  spared  from  defense  is  gained  by 
industry;  and  Brigham  alone  knows  how  much  is  saved  the  Church 
exchequer  in  fortresses,  military  equipments,  and  militia  drills,  by  the  hard 
earned  reputation  of  his  people  for  ferocity.  His  capital  lies  right  on  the 
transit  line  between  the  two  sea-borders  of  the  Continent.  Not  only 
peaceful  agriculturists  but  blacklegs  and  scamps  of  every  kind  pass 
through  Salt  Lake  City,  on  their  way  between  the  Atlantic  and  Pacific 
States.  All  trains  camp  in  or  about  the  city,  yet  he  never  needs  to 
reinforce  his  police ;  there  is  never  any  row  or  disturbance  among  them, 
because  an  undefinable  sense  of  prompt  and  certain  death  hangs  over 
every  man  who  meditates  an  outrage  either  against  the  Mormons  or 
his  fellows.  The  emigrant  feels  that  his  steps  are  dogged  by  Mormon 
spies  every  rod  of  the  way  from  the  Missouri  River ;  that  the  ranchman 
on  the  Plains,  anywhere  within  a  thousand  miles  of  Salt  Lake,  the  driver 
of  the  stage,  the  hunter,  the  guide,  even  the  other  emigrant  like  himself 


516  APPENDIX. 

whom  he  encounters  on  the  way,  may  be  noting  all  he  does  and  says,  to 
forerun  him  to  the  New  Jerusalem,  and  be  entered  on  the  Prophet's  memo- 
randum-book against  his  arrival.  So  his  circumspection  increases  until  it 
amounts  to  fear,  and  an  absolute  awe  settles  over  him  as  he  enters  the 
red  defiles  of  the  Wahsatch  Canons. 

The  abundant  portion  of  the  Mormon  reputation  for  ferocity  which  is 
true  must  be  read  in  the  light  of  the  past,  or  injustice  will  be  done  a 
hundred  thousand  souls  who,  in  spite  of  their  polygamy  and  disloyalty,  are 
still  our  fellow-citizens.  If  the  Mormons  are  vindictive,  let  us  remember 
what  a  training  they  have  had.  In  1830  the  "  Church  of  Jesus  Christ  of 
the  Latter-Day  Saints  "  was  first  organized  by  Joseph  Smith,  though  for 
ten  years  previous  he  had  professedly  lived  in  the  receipt  of  communica- 
tions from  angels,  Divine  inspiration,  and  all  the  other  signs  of  Apostle- 
ship.  Two  years  after,  on  the  25th  of  March,  1832,  at  Kirtland,  Ohio,  a 
mob  tarred  and  feathered  him  and  his  disciple,  Sidney  Kigdon,  for 
promulgating  their  sentiments  by  word  and  practice.  (This  was  long 
before  polygamy  had  been  thought  of  as  a  tenet  in  the  Mormon  creed 
—  the  Saint's  possession  of  their  goods  in  common  being  their  most 
obnoxious  principle).  The  next  year,  on  the  20th  of  July,  another  mob 
tore  down  the  printing-office  of  the  earliest  Mormon  newspaper,  at 
Jackson  City,  Missouri ;  tarred,  feathered,  and  whipped  the  Saints,  and 
compelled  the  leaders  to  leave  the  town  and  county ;  upon  which  they 
returned  to  Kirtland,  there  to  establish  another  paper,  and  lay  the 
corner-stone  of  "  The  Lord's  House."  A  little  more  than  three  months 
after  (October  31  of  the  same  year),  ten  houses  inhabited  by  converts 
to  the  faith  were  destroyed  by  another  mob.  The  persecution  continued 
to  rage,  with  bloody  fighting,  till  the  4th  of  November,  when  all  the  Saints 
fled  to  Clay  County,  Missouri.  In  December,  the  Mormons  of  Van  Buren 
County,  Missouri,  were  attacked  by  their  Gentile  neighbors.  In  May, 
1836,  the  Clay  County  Mormons  were  driven  out,  and  went  to  Carroll, 
Daviess,  and  Caldwell  Counties,  in  the  same  State  —  founding  in  the  last 
of  the  three  a  town  called  "  Far  West."  In  January,  1838,  after  the 
failure  of  their  bank,  Joseph  Smith  and  Sidney  Rigdon  were  compelled 
by  a  mob  to  flee  for  their  lives  from  Kirtland,  abandoning  a  "  House  of 
the  Lord  "  which  had  cost  the  Mormons  $40,000.  The  July  following, 
about  a  hundred  families,  or  nearly  six  hundred  people,  were  driven  out 
of  Kirtland  for  Mormonism,  and  fled  to  Missouri.  In  August  and  Septem- 
ber, having  attempted  to  elect  members  of  their  sect  to  county  offices  in 
Caldwell  and  Daviess  Counties,  Missouri,  they  were  again  mobbed ;  and 
in  one  instance  their  winning  the  election  excited  the  wrath  of  the  Gentiles 
to  such  a  degree  that  the  latter  turned  out  from  his  office  by  violence 
the  officer  elected,  and  several  Mormons,  Brigham  Young  among  the 
number,  had  to  flee  for  their  lives  to  Quincy,  Illinois.  On  the  1st  of 
October,  the  Saints  were  driven  out  of  their  homes  in  Carroll  County, 
after  a  pitched  battle.  There  was  another  battle  at  Crooked  River 


APPENDIX.  517 

Missouri,  on  the  25th,  in  which  several  Mormons  were  killed.  On  the 
30th,  at  Ham's  Mills,  Missouri,  sixteen  adults  and  two  boys  were 
slaughtered  by  a  mob,  in  cold  blood,  and  with  no  chance  or  weapons  to 
defend  themselves.  On  the  1st  of  November,  the  town  of  Far  West  was 
plundered  by  a  mob,  who  captured  Joseph  Smith,  his  brother  Hiram,  and 
forty  other  Mormons,  and  after  a  mock  drum-head  court-martial  sentenced 
them  to  be  shot ;  but  General  Doniphan  interposed  to  prevent  the  execu- 
tion of  the  sentence,  and  the  prisoners  were  sent  to  Richmond,  Missouri, 
to  be  tried.  Here  the  civil  authorities  released  them  after  a  protracted 
confinement  in  jail,  but  they  narrowly  escaped  butchery  at  the  hands  of 
the  militia.  Many  other  Mormons  in  various  parts  of  the  State  suffered 
imprisonment  about  the  same  'time,  but  were  generally  released  without 
even  the  pretense  of  a  trial.  In  1839,  the  sect  moved  its  head-quarters  to 
Commerce,  afterward  called  Nauvoo,  in  Hancock  County,  Illinois,  where 
the  Saints  had  rest  for  a  season,  and  the  town  increased  to  a  population 
of  15,000,  or  considerably  over  three  fourths  of  the  present  size  of  Salt 
Lake  City.  In  June,  1841,  the  Missourians  attempted  to  get  Joe  Smith 
again  into  their  hands,  sending  into  Illinois  a  requisition  from  their  Gov- 
ernor. On  this  requisition  he  was  arrested,  but  being  brought  up  on  a 
writ  of  habeas  corpus,  at  Monmouth,  Illinois,  upon  examination  he  was 
instantly  released.  On  the  8th  of  August,  1842,  he  was  arrested  on  a 
second  requisition,  but  discharged  as  before  —  his  arrest  being  adjudged 
groundless.  One  would  have  thought  this  second  defeat  of  his  enemies 
sufficient  to  discourage  them,  but  it  seems  not,  for  a  third  requisition  from 
the  Missouri  Governor  was  sent  for  him  on  the  26th  of  December,  in  the 
same  year  —  only  to  be  decided  null,  as  before,  on  the  5th  of  the  following 
month,  January,  1843.  It  reads  like  a  joke,  but  it  is  the  truth  that  on  the 
23d  of  June,  Smith  was  again  arrested,  to  be  released  on  the  2d  of  July. 
In  1844  the  Mormons  made  the  great  mistake  of  retaliating  religious  per- 
secution in  kind.  They  had  now  a  home  of  their  own,  where  their  influ- 
ence was  paramount,  and  might,  by  circumspect  behavior,  have  established 
their  position  beyond  the  reach  of  enemies.  But  as  usually  and  unfor- 
tunately happens  when  ill-luck  lets  up  the  persecuted,  they  used  their 
new-gained  power,  not  to  set  the  ignorant  and  malignant  who  had  perse- 
cuted them  a  better  example  of  religion  and  philosophy,  but  to  indemnify 
themselves  for  past  injuries  by  inflicting  the  like  on  others,  as  if  they  had 
all  the  while  been  seeking,  not  liberty  of  conscience,  but  liberty  to 
persecute;  as  if  the  salve  for  their  own  wounds  was  to  stab  some  one 
else;  as  if  an  injury  were  to  be  remedied,  not  by  trampling  it  under  the 
feet  of  the  injured,  but  by  passing  it  on  to  some  one  else.  The  "  Excelsior  " 
newspaper  having  libeled  Prophet  Smith,  was  visited  by  the  Mormon 
marshal  and  his  constables,  who  smashed  its  press  and  burned  its  types. 
Messrs.  Foster  and  Law,  the  proprietors,  sued  out  a  warrant  against  Joe 
Smith,  the  marshal,  and  other  Mormons,  accessory  to  the  destruction  of 
the  property,  who  resisted  the  sheriff  when  he  came  to  serve  it,  and 


518  APPENDIX. 

compelled  him  to  summon  the  State  militia  to  his  aid,  on  the  6th  of  May, 
1844.  On  the  17th  of  June,  he  succeeded  in  arresting  Smith,  who,  as 
usual,  was  released  after  a  few  days'  imprisonment.  Meanwhile  the 
Mormons  were  ready  to  defend  their  Prophet  the  moment  he  should  give 
the  word.  On  the  24th  of  June,  the  Governor  pledged  his  word  and  the 
honor  of  the  State  for  the  personal  safety  of  Joseph  and  Hiram  Smith, 
and  their  followers  if  they  would  compromise  for  the  sake  of  soothing  the 
exacerbated  people  by  laying  down  their  arms  and  going  to  Carthage  to 
be  tried.  The  Mormons  must  have  been  sadly  deficient  at  that  time, 
both  in  angelic  and  legal  advisers,  for  a  heavenly  revelation,  or  an  hour's 
talk  in  the  back-office  of  any  country  lawyer,  would  have  shown  them  that 
this  pledge  in  a  practical  point  of  view  was  not  worth  the  breath  it  was 
uttered  with,  —  a  State,  like  a  private  corporation,  having  no  honor,  and  that 
of  its  executive,  however  valuable  in  a  personal  point  of  view,  possessing 
no  official  weight  whatever.  Deserted  alike  of  angels  and  attorneys,  the 
over-credulous  Saints  permitted  themselves  to  be  disarmed  and  sent  to 
Carthage,  under  the  escort  of  a  company  of  militia  bitterly  opposed  to 
them,  and  the  next  day  the  prisoners  were  arrested  by  the  authorities  of 
Hancock  County,  Illinois,  on  a  charge  of  treason.  Two  days  after,  on  the 
afternoon  of  June  27th,  they  discovered  how  little  the  most  sincerely  given 
private  pledge  could  avail  for  their  protection  when  a  mob  of  Missouri- 
ans,  whose  number  have  been  variously  stated,  but  were  certainly 
over  a  hundred,  came  to  Carthage  jail,  beat  down  its  iron  doors,  and 
butchered  both  the  Smiths,  in  cold  blood,  besides  inflicting  serious  injuries 
upon  other  of  the  prisoners.  On  the  4th  of  October,  Brigham  Young 
succeeded  Joe  Smith  in  the  first  Presidency  of  the  Latter-Day  Church, 
and  early  in  the  next  year,  1845,  "by  special  revelation,"  decided  that 
the  Mormons  must  leave  Nauvoo.  This  decision  was  as  long-headed  as 
Brigham's  usually  are,  for  it  enabled  the  Saints  to  say  that  they  had 
taken  the  initiative,  and  had  not  been  expelled  by  the  action  of  the  State 
Legislature,  repealing  the  charter  of  Nauvoo,  which  took  place  nearly  ten 
months  after,  on  September  24th,  1845.  Though  they  had  anticipated 
this,  it  was  not  until  it  had  taken  place  that  they  decided  where  to  go.  Im- 
mediate settlement  of  this  question  became  necessary.  Brigham  Young 
and  the  Pratts  —  the  latter  perhaps  the  best  educated  and  most  scientific 
men  in  the  sect,  as  the  former  was  the  man  most  thoughtful  and  capable 
in  an  executive  point  of  view — had  read  with  great  interest  Captain  J.  C. 
Fremont's  reports  of  his  Rocky  Mountain  explorations,  which  at  that  time 
were  received  by  every  investigating  mind  with  the  delight  of  some 
fascinating  romance,  and  proposed  to  the  convention  appointed  to  deliber- 
ate upon  the  future  resting-place  of  their  ark,  that  a  pioneer  company 
should  be  sent  in  Fremont's  track  to  prospect  for  a  suitable  situation. 
This  counsel  prevailed  over  a  multitude  of  others,  and  in  1846,  all  but  a 
few  hundred  of  the  Saints  abandoned  Nauvoo  for  Council  Bluffs,  Garden 
Grove,  and  Mount  Pisgah,  in  Iowa ;  one  band  of  2,000  Mormons  crossing 


APPENDIX.  519 

the  Mississippi  on  the  ice,  in  the  month  of  February.  In  the  September 
following,  after  a  battle  of  three  days'  duration,  lasting  from  the  10th  to 
the  13th,  the  rear-guard  of  the  Saints,  which  had  stayed  behind  to  settle 
up  their  affairs,  were  forcibly  driven  out  of  Nauvoo,  and  now  the  entire 
Mormon  body,  with  the  exception  of  missionaries  and  secret  agents, 
whom  it  has  always  been  the  Mormon  policy  to  keep  scattered  among  the 
Gentiles,  as  a  sort  of  picket-line  to  watch  the  movements  of  the  enemy. 
On  the  24th  of  July,  1847,  Brigham  Young  with  his  pioneer  party  of  143 
men  and  70  wagons  entered  the  Salt  Lake  Valley,  and  in  obedience  to 
the  Lord's  revelation,  to  which  I  have  heretofore  referred,  delivered  to 
Brigham  by  an  angel,  the  night  previous,  on  Ensign  Peak,  selected  what 
was  then  a  wild  waste  of  artemisias  and  saltworts,  tenanted  only  by  sage- 
cocks,  badgers,  and  Go-Shoot  Indians,  as  the  future  site  of  God's  king- 
dom upon  earth.  The  anniversary  of  this  day  is  the  real  Mormon  inde- 
pendence day,  and  kept  by  them  with  much  more  eclat  than  the  4th. 

It  is  not  my  intention  to  pursue  their  history  further.  I  have  only 
endeavored  to  show  that  up  to  the  period  of  their  settlement  in  the  land 
where  at  present  they  hold  the  paramount  authority,  they  had  scarcely 
known  rest  for  the  soles  of  their  feet.  The  question  of  their  theology  and 
their  morals  does  not  enter  into  the  consideration  Their  tenets  were 
doubtless  extremely  offensive  to  their  neighbors  on  this  side  of  the  Mis- 
souri ;  they  cannot  fail  to  offend  the  good  taste  and  the  religious  sense 
of  any  people  indoctrinated  into  the  principles  of  Christian  civilization. 
But  this  does  not  alter  the  fact  that  their  perpetual  molestation  by  mob 
violence  during  the  entire  period  of  their  stay  in  the  States,  was  persecu- 
tion of  the  bitterest  character.  One  of  the  noblest  achievements  of  the 
very  civilization  and  Christianity  which  their  tenets  offend  is  the  doc- 
trine of  religious  tolerance.  The  light  by  whose  ray  mankind  have 
learned  the  falsity  of  those  doctrines  which  constitute  the  staple  of  Mor- 
monism,  is  the  very  same  light  by  which  mankind  have  discovered  the 
loathsomeness  of  religious  persecution.  And  whether  religious  persecu- 
tion be  loathsome  or  not,  —  whether  or  not  the  Mormons  in  some  cases 
infringed  by  the  practice  of  their  belief  upon  the  rights  of  adjoining  com- 
munities,—  they  were  certainly  harassed  and  injured  to  a  degree  which 
may  abundantly  explain  any  bitterness  of  feeling  which  they  now  cherish 
toward  their  former  neighbors.  I  have  no  desire  to  set  myself  up  either 
as  their  advocate  or  judge  ;  I  am  only  one  among  the  many  students  of 
their  problem ;  and  it  becomes  such  an  one  to  array  all  the  facts  he  finds 
accessible  that  he  may  understand  every  phenomenon  of  4heir  peculiar 
existence.  Were  I  one  of  the  early  chemists  studying  the  subject  of  the 
compound  SOs  HO,  and  should  find  that  one  of  its  phenomena  was 
acidity,  I  certainly  should  not  be  thought  particularly  prejudiced  in  favor 
of  sulphur  because  I  was  stringent  in  my  quantitative  analysis  of  the  oxy- 
gen and  water  which  are  demanded  to  explain  how  the  sulphur  has  been 
changed  so  as  to  exhibit  an  acid  reaction.  The  Mormons,  like  any  other 


520  APPENDIX. 

community  among  mankind,  are  a  compound :  many  Gentiles  who  have 
known  them  would  tell  me  that  I  might  press  the  figure  still  further  with- 
out breaking  its  back  and  call  them  a  sulphurous  compound.  They  are  a 
compound  who  exhibit  in  the  most  decided  degree  the  phenomenon  of 
acidity.  If  we  really  care  to  come  at  the  truth  about  them,  or  have  any 
other  object  than  that  of  gratifying  dislike  by  denunciation,  we  must 
consent  entirely  to  dismiss  the  spirit  of  the  special  pleader  on  either  side, 
and  adopting  that  of  the  philosopher,  to  weigh  dispassionately  all  the 
circumstances  through  which  they  have  been  brought  to  their  present  con- 
dition of  hatred  and  vindictiveness.  This  appears  to  me  the  only  way  to 
study  either  an  individual  man  or  a  body  of  men,  and  it  is  in  accordance 
with  this  way  that  I  have  rehearsed  the  grievances  which  the  Mormons 
endured  in  the  States,  —  grievances  of  such  sore  and  continuous  char- 
acter as  might  well  turn  any  body  of  men  into  Ishmaelites,  without  regard 
to  the  question  whether  their  religion  was  false  or  true.  When  I  found  a 
man  as  dispassionate  as  George  Smith  appeared  in  his  recital  of  the  suffer- 
ings endured  by  his  sect,  and  recollected  that  two  of  his  cousins  had  been 
murdered  in  cold  blood  by  the  enemies  of  whom  he  spoke  ;  when  I  recol- 
lected how  repeatedly  Brigham  Young  had  carried  his  life  in  his  hand,  and 
been  driven  from  home,  property,  everything  a  man  holds  dearest,  yet  saw 
that  under  ordinary  circumstances  he  controlled  his  temper  and  seldom 
spoke  revengefully,  I  could  not  avoid  acknowledging  at  least  in  this  re- 
spect the  intellectual  greatness  of  the  men,  whatever  I  might  think  of  their 
views  upon  theology  and  religion.  If  those  are  false,  the  triumph  of  self- 
control  in  the  men  is  all  the  greater,  for  they  achieve  it  without  the 
help  of  that  great  adjuvant  to  calmness  and  self-control,  —  the  being 
right.  The  world's  archives  furnish  their  students  with  many  a  sad  story 
of  people  whom  the  verdict  of  humanity  now  calls  right  using  their  first 
hour  of  freedom  to  enslave,  their  first  firm  foothold  to  supplant,  their  first 
refuge  from  murder  to  slay  their  fellow-men.  The  gallery  of  historic 
paintings  in  which  hang  the  grandest  battle-pieces  between  Superstition, 
Tyranny,  and  Corruption  on  the  one  side,  Truth,  Freedom,  and  Holiness 
on  the  other,  contains  dark  alcoves  where  the  philosopher  must  turn  aside 
to  blush  for  his  race  as  he  sees  laid  in  with  a  bloody  brush  pictures  of  the 
Protestant  just  escaped  from  rack  and  fagot  dragging  thither  Arian  and 
Skeptic  with  freshly  unfettered  hands  ;  and  the  Puritan  importing  across 
the  sea  the  lash  and  the  halter  which  he  had  fled  from  when  wielded  by 
Prelacy,  to  lay  them  on  the  backs  and  tighten  them  round  the  necks  of 
Quaker  and  of  Indian.  Yet  these  were  good  men,  and  had  a  strength  to 
rely  on,  which  does  not  belong  to  errorists  like  the  Mormons.  We  cannot 
wonder  at  the  spirit  of  the  latter  when  we  disapprove  it  most. 

The  noble  spectacle  of  a  people  breaking  the  yoke  of  tyranny  to  make 
freedom  general  is  preserved  for  the  generations  which  are  to  come  after. 
The  utmost  that  history  thus  far  shows  us  is  a  people  breaking  the  yoke 
for  their  own  freedom's  sake.  Much  has  been  said  by  popular  speakers 


APPENDIX.  521 

in  praise  of  the  Pilgrim  Fathers,  as  men  who  crossed  a  wintry  sea  and 
buried  themselves  in  savage  forests,  to  establish  the  great  doctrine  of 
liberty  of  conscience.  Much  as  those  brave  men  are  to  be  reverenced, 
such  an  assertion  respecting  them  seeins  incorrect.  They  left  their  Eng- 
lish homes  and  sought  the  American  wilderness  not  for  liberty  of  con- 
science but  for  liberty  of  Calvinism.  Grant  if  we  will  the  superiority  of 
their  set  of  doctrines  over  those  of  Prelacy ;  we  are  still  compelled  to 
own  that  their  motive  in  obtaining  freedom  was  nowise  nobler  than  that 
of  the  Laud  faction  in  seeking  supremacy.  The  liberty  sought  by  both 
High  Churchman  and  Puritan  was  liberty  to  worship  God  as  their  own 
consciences  dictated  —  not  the  liberty  of  all  men  to  do  the  same.  To 
acknowledge  this  is  no  derogation  from  the  purity  of  nature,  the  inflexible 
uprightness,  the  truthfulness  of  soul,  which  their  bitterest  enemies  equally 
with  their  warmest  friends  must  accord  to  the  early  settlers  of  New  Eng- 
land. Indeed,  it  is  only  doing  them  justice  to  define  their  claims  to  ad- 
miration accurately.  We  prevent  the  acknowledgment  of  their  real 
excellences  by  taking  in  their  defense  an  untenable  stand  on  virtues 
which  they  had  not,  —  virtues  which  at  that  day  were  possessed  by  no 
people  on  the  globe.  In  the  early  part  of  the  seventeenth  century  liberty 
of  conscience  as  an  abstract  principle  was  the  Utopian  dream  of  mild 
enthusiasts  ;  had  it  been  proposed  as  a  rule  of  general  application  of 
national  and  ecclesiastical  government,  it  would  have  been  scouted  from 
the  benches  of  Convocation  and  the  seats  of  General  Assembly  alike. 
The  furthest  attainment  that  had  been  made  by  any  people  was  the  dis- 
covery that  their  own  beliefs  were  right,  and  that  no  sacrifice*  of  life  or 
property  was  too  great  for  the  sake  of  securing  their  unmolested  indul- 
gence. This  was  a  great  advance  from  the  servility  and  nonchalance 
which  considered  individual  opinion  a  matter  of  no  consequence  com- 
pared with  homogeneous  institutions  and  the  smooth  working  of  mankind 
under  one  supreme  hand  and  eye,  like  a  vast  senseless  machine,  —  a  great 
advance,  but  it  was  not  liberty  of  conscience.  The  age  was  not  ripe  for 
the  reception  of  that  doctrine,  and  to  deny  its  possession  even  by  the 
brave  men  from  whose  veins  much  of  our  country's  best  blood  is  derived, 
is  merely  to  confess  that  they  had  not  reached  a  pinnacle  of  intellectual 
progress  which  was  utterly  inaccessible  to  any  people  at  that  day,  —  a 
height  which  we  ourselves  nearly  two  hundred  and  fifty  years  after  them 
have  only  just  reached,  and  on  which  even  we  stand  but  totteringly. 
They  are  as  little  to  blame  for  not  having  attained  the  doctrine  of  liberty 
of  conscience  as  distinct  from  liberty  of  their  particular  conscience,  as 
they  are  for  not  making  a  screw-steamer  of  their  May-Flower,  establishing 
telegraph  lines  between  their  Massachusetts  settlements,  or  printing  the 
sermons  of  Cotton  Mather  on  a  ten-cylinder  press.  There  was,  therefore, 
no  inconsistency  in  their  persecuting  those  who  differed  from  them  at 
Plymouth,  as  they  had  been  persecuted  by  those  who  differed  from  them 
in  London,  though  they  would  have  been  most  indefensibly  inconsistent 


522  APPENDIX. 

had  they  really  set  up  for  defenders  of  liberty  of  conscience.  Never 
once  did  they  blame  their  enemies  on  the  ground  of  their  violating  such 
liberty ;  their  grievance  lay  simply  in  the  fact  that  they  themselves,  pos- 
sessing the  only  truth,  were  oppressed  by  errorists  over  whom  they  should 
have  been  supreme  ;  and  the  moment  that  they  obtained  such  supremacy, 
without  a  thought  that  they  were  violating  a  universal  right  of  mankind, 
they  turned  the  tables  on  error  and  suppressed  it  with  its  own  weapons. 

I  do  not  know  where  to  look  for  an  instance  of  freedom  sought  for  its 
own  beloved  sake  —  not  merely  as  a  personal  privilege,  but  as  the  fran- 
chise of  humanity.  Even  we,  the  acknowledged  color-bearers  of  liberty  — 
we,  the  American  people,  who  have  fought  the  fiercest  battles  of  history, 
borne  the  bitterest  pangs,  suifered  the  hardest  deprivations,  and  won  the 
grandest  triumphs,  threw  off  the  yoke  of  England  with  one  hand,  while 
we  riveted  our  own  on  the  neck  of  Africa  with  the  other.  England  drove 
out  the  Stuarts  and  subjugated  Ireland  with  fire  and  sword,  under  pres- 
sure of  one  and  the  same  popular  impulse  ;  Holland  was,  at  the  same 
time,  the  fruitfulest  mother  of  freemen  and  the  cruelest  mistress  of  slaves ; 
the  sound  of  the  lash,  and  the  groans  of  the  tortured  bondsman  went  up 
to  plead  with  God  against  her  from  all  her  tropical  colonies,  before  the 
songs  of  lofty  faith,  or  the  cheers  of  glorious  triumph  died  on  the  ears 
of  baffled  Alva  ;  France  rescued  herself  from  the  Bourbons  and  murdered 
Toussaint  L'Ouverture.  The  philosopher  looks  in  vain  through  time,  and 
round  the  world,  to  find  a  people  dedicated  to  any  liberty  except  its  own ; 
and  gives  up  the  hope  of  beholding  such  in  his  day,  with  a  resignation 
born  only  of  the  perception  that  America,  through  a  succession  of  fiery 
furnaces,  is  surely  getting  purified  to  take  that  place  of  sublime  distinction 
in  the  eyes  of  his  great  grandchildren. 

Least  of  all  the  persecuted  faiths  does  Mormonism  contemplate  liberty 
of  conscience  as  a  principle  of  national  organization.  Nothing  but  the 
presence  of  the  United  States  authority  in  its  symbols  of  court,  camp,  and 
executive,  prevent  Utah  from  becoming  the  prey  of  the  most  unmingled 
tyranny  which  the  world  ever  saw.  Even  the  wisest  and  most  dispassion- 
ate of  the  Mormon  leaders  look  upon  popular  freedom,  both  civil  and  re- 
ligious, as  a  very  undesirable  thing.  None  of  them  remember  their  re- 
peated expulsions  from  home,  the  ruin  of  their  fortunes,  the  murder  of 
their  sons,  the  atrocities  of  all  kinds  which  they  suffered  from  mobs,  as 
outrageous  because  they  violated  a  principle,  but  solely  because  directed 
against  them,  the  chosen  people  of  God.  Had  the  mob  been  a  Mormon 
one,  its  object  the  propagandism  instead  of  the  extirpation  of  Joe  Smith's 
doctrine,  and  its  victims  the  Gentiles  instead  of  the  Saints,  its  whole  moral 
character  in  their  eyes  would  have  been  diametrically  different.  They 
put  down  dissent  with  the  same  strong  hand  which  smote  them  in  a  coun- 
try where  they  held  the  minority.  Nor  is  this  course  on  their  part  the 
result  of  unreasoning  indignation  —  a  mob-method  of  settling  differences 
like  that  from  which  they  suffered  in  Missouri.  It  is  the  Mormon  theory 
of  government  —  the  organic  principle  of  Mormonism. 


APPENDIX.  523 

Herein  lies  the  political  crime  of  the  system  —  here  is  the  ground  of 
inevitable  collision  between  Mormonism  and  the  Government  —  the  ine- 
radicable root  of  bitterness  springing  up  between  the  now  isolated  nation- 
ality under  Brigham  Young  and  the  people  of  the  United  States,  who 
surround  and  have  the  supremacy  over  it.  Mormonism  is  a  distinct,  sys- 
tematic, dispassionate  contradiction  of  the  American  idea.  Its  position  is 
one  of  avowed  and  essential  hostility  to  that  of  the  nation.  Its  leaders  find 
a  serious  grievance  in  the  delay  of  Congress  to  grant  Utah  the  rank  and 
privileges  of  a  State.  Here  they  do  not  show  the  practical  wisdom  and 
foresight  which  have  characterized  their  views  and  decided  their  action 
in  many  other  instances.  To  make  Utah  a  State  would  be  their  own  in- 
evitable destruction.  They  desire  the  State  rank  as  an  addition  to  their 
own  emolument,  pride,  and  power.  They  would  fain  possess  a  State 
constitution,  as  the  Philistines  wanted  Samson,  for  their  sport.  They 
would  reduce  it  to  the  instrument  of  their  pleasure ;  shearing  it  of  the 
strength  which  endangers  tyrants  ;  blinding  it  of  the  vigilance  which  pro- 
tects the  people ;  making  it  play  at  their  feasts,  the  guardian  of  freedom 
reduced  to  a  minister  of  their  pomp,  little  dreaming  that  the  blinded 
giant  must  surely  rise  in  his  wrath,  and,  bowing  on  the  pillars,  bring  their 
Dagon  temple  to  the  ground.  Woe  to  Mormonism  the  day  that  Utah 
becomes  a  State  !  In  lie  Constitution  of  our  country,  in  the  first  clause 
of  the  fourth  section  of  Article  Fourth  it  is  thus  written  :  — 

"  The  United  States  shall  guarantee  to  every  State  in  this  Union  a  re- 
publican form  of  government." 

These  words  are  the  death-warrant  of  Mormonism.  So  long  as  Utah 
remains  a  Territory,  the  way  in  which  its  internal  affairs  are  managed, 
under  the  shelter  of  a  technicality  may  be  left  comparatively  undisturbed 
by  Congress,  provided  only  that  the  national  courts  are  respected,  and 
the  national  taxes  paid.  The  supreme  people  of  the  United  States  may 
blink  at  the  fact  that  its  territorial  citizens  are  living  under  the  yoke  of 
despotism,  —  especially  while  the  majority  of  those  citizens  accept  that 
yoke,  —  for  the  Constitution  only  pledges  its  guarantee  of  a  republican 
form  of  government  to  States.  But  once  make  Utah  a  State,  and  the  last 
technical  quibble  is  swept  from  under  the  feet  of  Mormonism.  That  in- 
stant, and  it  becomes  the  solemn  duty  of  the  nation  —  a  duty  which  it  can- 
not shirk  if  it  would  ;  a  duty  whose  neglect  would  violate  the  organic  in- 
strument and  principle  of  its  existence ;  a  duty  from  which  it  cannot  on 
any  plea  absolve  itself  without  confessing  its  imbecility  and  branding 
itself  with  contempt  before  the  world  —  to  extirpate  Mormonism  as  a  civil 
institution  from  the  soil  of  Deseret  forever. 

Mormonism  is,  as  I  have  said,  a  retrogression  toward  the  ante- Christian 
ages ;  a  cession  of  all  the  ground  which  has  been  won  from  Ignorance  and 
Despotism  since  the  birth  of  Christ ;  a  surrender  of  every  stronghold  and 
charter  of  freedom  for  which  patriots  and  martyrs  have  shed  their  blood ; 
a  confession  that  all  reform  has  only  been  a  worse  deforming  ;  that  prog- 


524  APPENDIX. 

ress  has  been  deterioration  ;  that  the  spread  of  popular  enlightenment 
has  only  plunged  the  world  into  deeper  gloom ;  that  the  civil  and  relig- 
ious emancipations  which  have  cost  humanity  during  our  era  tenfold  more 
agony  than  has  been  endured,  more  tears  than  have  been  shed,  more 
yearnings  and  strivings  than  have  been  felt  for  any  other  cause  to  which 
its  heart  can  be  devoted,  are  all  naught  or  worse  than  naught, —  as  so  many 
steps  in  a  course  steadily  and  continuously  wrong  since  the  day  that  man 
emerged  from  the  dark  portals  of  Idolatry  and  J  udaism. 

On  the  other  hand  Republicanism  stands  forth  as  the  representative 
and  concrete  form  of  human  progress.  It  is  the  embodied  idea  of  growth ; 
the  solid,  aggressive  assertion  of  the  fact  that  man  has  become  wiser,  bet- 
ter, happier  with  every  step  of  the  Christian  era  ;  that  the  triumph  of 
popular  principles  is  the  triumph  of  God  ;  that  the  utmost  independence 
of  individual  thought  and  action  consistent  with  the  enjoyment  of  equal 
independence  by  his  neighbor  is  every  man's  right,  and  the  most  favor- 
able condition  for  his  perfection  in  goodness  ;  in  fine,  that  the  world  has 
bettered  and  is  bettering  every  year  by  an  equitable  distribution  of  its  ad- 
vantages throughout  society,  and  that  man's  conscience  is  inviolable  : 
these  are  the  things  which  America  stands  in  the  lists  of  nations  to 
affirm  ;  these,  if  need  be,  to  defend  with  the  right  arm  of  power. 

Nothing  can  bring  the  Mormon  and  the  national  ideas  together.  There 
is  no  more  compromise  between  them  than  between  ice  and  fire,  dark- 
ness and  light.  They  are  diametrically  opposed  forces.  They  are  as  un- 
mixable  as  water  and  oil.  Absence  of  contact  between  them  can  alone 
prevent  their  collision.  Theirs  is  an  irrepressible  conflict,  —  as  irrepress- 
ible as  that  between  the  national  idea  and  slavery,  —  and  this  conflict 
must  terminate  as  that  one  did,  with  the  triumph  of  the  national  idea. 
The  Mormons  feel  the  parallel  instinctively  and  reveal  the  feeling  uncon- 
sciously, in  asserting,  as  they  often  do,  and  as  Brigham  Young  did  to  me 
on  the  evening  of  the  ball,  that  the  very  same  spirit  whicn  drove  them 
from  the  East  brought  on  the  late  war  of  the  rebellion.  They  realize  the 
fact  that  "two  cannot  walk  together  except  they  be  agreed,"  and  their 
system  is  so  inherently  and  utterly  obnoxious  to  that  which  founds  and 
maintains  our  free  institutions,  that  agreement  is  as  impossible  as  it  would 
be  between  America  and  an  independent  state  of  cannibals,  infanticides, 
or  widow-burners,  which  by  some  magic  had  been  transplanted  from  the 
Marquesas,  China,  or  Hindostan  into*  the  place  now  occupied  by  Georgia. 
The  safety  from  disturbance  hitherto  enjoyed  by  Mormonism  at  Salt  Lake 
has  been  due  entirely  to  its  isolation.  This  cannot  continue  always.  The 
Pacific  Railroad  will  break  it  up  entirely.  When  Utah  becomes  readily 
accessible,  the  Gentile  element,  led  by  motives  of  aggrandizement  and  the 
sanitary  advantages  of  Utah  as  a  residence,  will  come  pouring  in  upon 
the  Saints  as  at  Nauvoo.  Then  the  National  Government  will  possess  a 
constituency  in  the  Salt  Lake  region  which  will  demand  its  interposi- 
tion for  their  defense,  and  the  American  and  Mormon  systems  will  in- 


APPENDIX.  525 

stantly  come  together  in  the  shock  of  a  conflict  which  though  much  more 
promptly  settled  than  that  from  which  we  have  just  emerged  cannot  fail, 
if  the  present  Mormon  leaders  are  alive,  to  be  as  bloody. 

I  find  extreme  uncertainty  prevailing  at  the  East  in  regard  to  the  Mor- 
mon character  and  destiny ;  but  on  no  particular  point  to  a  greater  de- 
gree, than  on  this  —  how  the  collision  which  I  have  called  inevitable  will 
occur,  and  how  it  will  be  settled.     Many  good  and  wise  men,  to  whose 
moral  natures  polygamy  is  abhorrent,  are  still  unable  to  see  how  it  can 
ever  become  a  valid  ground  for  the  interference  of  the  National  Govern- 
ment.    To  such,  any  governmental  disturbance  of  local  customs  regarding 
marriage,  looks  as  tyrannous  as  dictation  concerning  statutes  of  divorce. 
If  Congress  is  to  decide  that  a  man  may  not  marry  as  often  as  he  pleases, 
why,  they  ask,  may  it  not  also  settle  the  question  as  to  what  constitutes 
the  legal  ground  of  separation  ?     In  the  majority  of  the  States  nothing 
but  infidelity  is  admitted  as  such  a  ground ;  in  a  few  States  the  decree  of 
divorce  is  issued  upon  the  simple  proof  of  marital  unhappiness.     In  the 
latter  States  both  the  divorced  parties  are  free  to  contract  fresh  alliances. 
But,  supposing  that  such  divorced  parties  should  come  into  one  of  the 
former  class  of  States  and  select  new  partners,  in  this  State  they  would  be 
guilty  of  bigamy,  their  former  partners  not  having  been  separated  from 
them  on  any  ground  allowed  by  the  State.     Why  should  not  such  a  case 
of  bigamy  be  made  the  subject  of  Congressional  legislation  as  well  as 
that  of  Utah  ?     Moreover,  marriage  seems  essentially  to  belong  to  those 
matters  which  are  with  most  propriety  settled  in  foro  conscientice ;  or,  if 
we  regard  the  importance  of  that  relation  in  its  bearings  on  the  neighbors 
of  the  married,  as  settling  to  a  great  extent  the  happiness  and  safety  of 
the  social  system,  legislation  upon  it  may  most  naturally  be  committed 
to  the  community  immediately  concerned.     Those  who  have  favored  na- 
tional legislation  against  polygamy  are  in  the  habit  of  comparing  it  with 
slavery  —  an  institution  with  which  Congress  to  a  certain  extent  was 
always  obliged  to  concern  itself,  and  which,  finally,  it  was  compelled  by 
ratificatory  action,  at  least,  to  destroy,  in  spite  of  the  fact  that  it  was  do- 
mestic and  internal  to  separate  independent  States.     The  analogy,  how- 
ever, is  a  strained  one.     In  the  humanitarian  point  of  view,  slavery  and 
polygamy  are  entirely  different.     The  slave  is  held  compulsorily ;  in  Utah 
the  wife  of  the  polygamist  is  not  obliged  to  stay  with  him  a  single  day 
after  she  is  dissatisfied.     She  has  merely  to  go  to  Brigham  Young  and 
inform  him  that  she  is  unhappy  with  her  husband  ;  upon  which,  after  suf- 
ficient investigation  to  ascertain  that  her  step  is  deliberate,  and  not  the 
result  of  a  sudden  fit  of  passion  the  consequences  of  which  she  would  repent 
in  her  calmer  moments,  the  President  decrees  a  divorce  immediately. 
Cases  have  occurred  in  which  a  woman  entered  Brigham's  office  the  wife 
of  one  man  and  went  out  of  it  another's.     Nor  does  polygamy  resemble 
slavery  in  the  expansiveness  of  its  results.     The  fact  that  a  negro  could 
be  made  to  produce  a  hundred  dollars'  worth  of  cotton  on  one  tenth  of 


526  APPENDIX. 

the  outlay  in  food  and  clothes  for  which  a  similar  amount  of  labor  could 
be  procured  from  the  poorest  freeman,  tended  to  depreciate  labor  through- 
out the  entire  country;  and  when,  as  often  happened,  especially  among 
the  class  of  slaves  resulting  from  slavery's  favorite  practice  of  "  miscege- 
nation," not  only  brute  labor,  but  a  high  grade  of  mechanical  ingenuity 
and  artistic  skill,  could  be  procured  for  the  still  minuter  fraction  of  an 
equally  accomplished  white  man's  wages,  —  not  only  muscular  strength, 
but  intellectual  ability  was  undersold  and  degraded  through  the  length  and 
breadth  of  the  land.  But  the  possibility  of  marrying  two  wives  in  Utah 
affects  none  of  the  partners  to  monogamic  marriages  in  other  parts  of  the 
country  —  does  not  degrade  the  marital  relation,  nor  alter  the  sacredness 
of  the  tie  and  the  condition  of  the  married  woman  elsewhere.  In  fact, 
the  example  of  a  polygamic  community  operates,  by  way  of  warning,  to 
intensify  the  monogamic  spirit  of  people  beyond  the  boundary  of  its  im- 
mediate influence.  To  say  the  least,  the  marriage  question  is  a  very  del- 
icate and  complicated  one,  and  the  central  power  of  a  Union  like  our  own 
must  hesitate  long  before  it  touches  the  question  in  any  Territory  or  State. 

But  there  is  no  need  of  such  an  interference.  Every  end  which  might 
be  attained  by  it  may  be  secured  without  running  the  risk  of  establishing 
a  bad  precedent  —  of  acting  unconstitutionally  against  the  liberty  of 
conscience  and  popular  sovereignty  —  by  a  method  much  simpler,  even 
though  less  direct,  and  so  far  from  being  open  to  serious  objections  on  the 
ground  of  our  republican  principles,  certain  to  be  demanded  in  obedi- 
ence to  those  principles,  for  the  settlement  of  the  Mormon  question,  at  no 
distant  day.  The  moment  that  Mormonism  becomes  a  power  dangerous 
to  the  peace  and  supremacy  of  the  Union,  admit  Utah  into  the  sisterhood 
of  States,  and  fulfill  to  her  people  the  constitutional  guarantee  of  a 
republican  form  of  government.  For  the  attainment  of  that  end,  Congress 
will  be  compelled  to  deprive  the  Church  of  all  civil  authority ;  and  the 
unhallowed  union  of  Church  and  State  once  terminated,  Mormonism 
necessarily  sinks  to  the  level  of  any  other  sect.  That  sinking  means 
destruction.  Episcopacy  and  Presbyterianism  flourish  still  more  healthily, 
as  we  have  seen  in  this  country,  when  disentangled  from  the  corrupting 
embrace  of  civil  power;  no  longer  state  churches,  as  in  England  and 
Scotland,  they  become  churches  of  the  people,  and  draw  fresh  blood  from 
the  great,  warm  heart  on  which  they  were  naturally  meant  to  lie :  but 
Mormonism  has  no  popular  basis —  it  must  have  authority,  or  perish.  It 
is  government  as  much  as  it  is  worship  —  it  is  a  despotism  in  both  ;  in  fine, 
it  is  Judaism  revived,  or  rather,  galvanized  into  a  mockery  of  life,  and 
adapted  to  the  nineteenth  century,  in  the  particulars  where  it  has  not 
force  enough  to  adapt  the  nineteenth  century  to  itself. 

I  have  repeatedly  asserted  that  Mormonism  is  Judaism,  and  this  seems 
the  best  place  to  examine  how  far  that  assertion  may  be  verified.  There 
has  always  been  a  Judaizing  tendency  at  work,  with  greater  or  less  vigor, 
in  the  body  of  Christian  civilization.  It  troubled  the  Apostles,  who  could 


APPENDIX.  527 

scarcely  leave  their  flocks  before  Judaistic  teachers  sprung  up  among 
them,  and  tried  to  bring  them  back  under  the  former  yoke  of  bondage. 
It  has  manifested  itself  ever  since,  in  efforts  made  to  substitute  cumbrous 
rituals  for  the  simple  worship  of  a  loving  nature  and  righteous  living ; 
sacred  places  like  Samaria  and  Jerusalem,  like  Rome  and  the  Temple,  or 
the  church  edifice  in  general,  for  the  spirit  in  which  God  would  have  men 
worship  Him ;  special  sacred  days,  fasts,  feasts,  "  new-moons  and  Sab- 
baths," for  the  one  unbroken  day  of  a  whole  devoted  life.  In  the  religion 
of  this  country  the  Judaizing  tendency  has  powerfully  manifested  itself. 
Noble  in  its  spirit,  purposes,  and  results  as  Puritanism  to  a  great  extent  has 
been,  it  has  greatly  favored  and  fostered  this  tendency.  It  has  distrusted 
the  mild  discipline,  the  persuasive  doctrines  of  the  Christian  dispensation, 
impliedly  treating  them  as  too  lax  for  the  regulation  of  human  life,  and 
needing  to  be  reinforced  by  the  sterner  threats,  and  more  terrible  penal- 
ties of  the  Mosaic  ages.  It  has  abjured  the  doctrine  of  progressive 
revelation,  and  confounded  the  fulfillment  of  a  dispensation  intended  for 
the  infancy  of  mankind  with  insult  to  that  dispensation  and  its  blasphe- 
mous degradation  from  the  respect  due  a  revelation  of  God ;  forgetting  that 
the  Bible  itself  declares  its  temporary  purpose,  calls  it  at  best  but  a 
shadow  of  good  things  to  come,  and  says  that  the  first  generation  of  our 
present  era  should  not  pass  away  before  every  jot  and  tittle  of  it  was 
fulfilled.  Standing  on  the  untenable  ground,  that  a  system  which  was 
true  for  a  given  time  and  race,  must  be  true  for  all  times  and  all  races  ; 
moreover,  influenced  by  a  sombre  spirit  peculiar  to  its  own  moral  constitu- 
tion (without  which  it  would  not  have  fallen  into  its  intellectual  mistake), 
it  has  favored  the  introduction  among  our  people  of  a  sort  of  hybrid 
religion,  which  may  be  called,  at  the  risk  of  a  theological  bull,  Old  Testa- 
ment Christianity.  The  child  brought  up  under  its  discipline  finds  it 
hard  to  believe  that  the  Messiah  has  really  come,  and  cannot  see  anything 
but  a  technical  ground  of  disagreement  between  Christians  and  Jews. 
He  hears  the  Old  Testament  read  at  church  and  in  the  family  quite  as 
often  as  the  New  —  even  oftener  than  any  part  but  the  polemic.  He  is 
taught  to  regard  God  chiefly  as  Force  ;  he  hears  of  Him  manifesting  the 
passions  of  humanity,  and  a  very  imperfect  humanity  at  that ;  but  is 
instructed  to  palliate  these  manifestations,  on  the  ground  that  his  force  is 
the  Supreme  Force,  his  will  the  Paramount  Will.  Thus  he  learns  that 
only  in  finite  matters  is  "  might  makes  right "  an  abominable  doctrine ; 
that  making  the  terms  infinite,  the  proposition  becomes  a  formula  for 
the  expression  of  the  highest  holiness  of  the  universe.  The  Judaistic 
Christian,  as  I  said  of  the  Mormon,  —  though  in  a  less  degree,  because  he 
has  not  been  consistent  enough  to  carry  out  his  views  to  their  ultimate 
logical  conclusions,  —  has  thrown  away  the  results  of  the  last  eighteen 
centuries,  and  gone  back  for  his  spiritual  aliment  to  the  crude  and  half- 
developed  notions  of  truth  and  laws  of  life,  which  were  granted  to  the 
imperfect  faculties  of  the  ancients,  by  that  Divine  Spirit  of  accommoda- 


528  APPENDIX. 

tion  which  prepares  for  the  human  race  its  food  in  due  season,  —  milk  for 
babes,  strong  meat  for  men,  —  and  furnishes  mankind  in  any  given  era 
only  with  such  pabulum  as  it  can  digest.  As  was  said  above,  the  whole 
error  of  Puritan  theology  lies  in  its  obstinate  denial  of  the  fact  that  all 
Divine  dealings  with  mankind  are  progressive.  It  insists  on  this  denial 
because  it  fears  that  a  confession  of  the  fact  involves  the  unsettlement  of 
faith  —  involves  an  admission  that  what  is  true  to-day  may  not  be  true 
to-morrow.  If  it  conceded  this  it  must  lose  its  organic  existence,  for  its 
axis  is  not  love  but  belief —  not  a  principle  of  life,  but  a  set  of  doctrines. 
So,  there  is  no  way  of  escape  for  it.  It  cannot  say  that  God's  revelation 
of  himself  and  of  his  plan  of  governing  the  universe,  as  given  to  the  Jews, 
was  a  very  good  thing  —  even  the  very  best  thing  for  the  day  and  the 
people  to  whom  it  was  made ;  that  it  conveyed  the  largest  amount  of 
truth  capable  of  being  comprehended  by  an  infant  race,  and  that  to  have 
conveyed  more  would  have  really  had  the  effect  of  conveying  less ;  that 
just  as  I  say  "  The  sun  rises  "  to  a  child,  whom  my  utmost  effort  could  not 
cause  to  comprehend  the  phenomena  of  terrestrial  revolution,  the  Creator 
may  describe  Himself  and  his  dealings  to  a  Jew  of  Joshua's,  David's,  or 
Herod's  time  in  a  way  which  was  absolutely  perfect  in  its  fitness  to 
reveal  the  greatest  amount  of  truth,  and  inculcate  the  highest  degree  of 
holiness  which  the  ancient  hearer  was  developed  to  attain,  but  which,  at 
the  same  time,  to  me  with  my  enlightenment  of  at  least  1870  years  plus 
the  ancients',  should  be  no  truth  at  all,  and  no  stimulus  in  the  way  of 
holiness. 

Unable  to  make  this  acknowledgment  without  the  corollary  that  re- 
vealed doctrine  is  progressive  ;  unable  to  grant  that  corollary  without  the 
further  conclusion  that  life,  not  doctrine,  is  the  only  eternal,  unchangeable 
basis  of  religion;  unable  to  see  that  Christ  came,  not  to  impart  an 
immutable  creed,  which  in  the  nature  of  human  intellect  is  a  thing  impos- 
sible, but  to  infuse  a  spirit  into  the  life  of  mankind,  which  should  keep  the 
soul  advancing  into  grander  perceptions  of  intellectual  truth  forever,  and  to 
implant  a  deathless  germinal  principle,  whose  growth,  while  it  sweetened 
and  purified  the  moral  character,  should  enable  the  reason  to  throw  off 
shard  after  shard  of  creed,  as  it  found  their  capacities  successively  too 
narrow  to  bound  and  embody  the  truth  which  its  strengthening  vision 
caught,  and  its  increasing  constructive  powers  formulated,  —  unable  to  do 
thus,  Judaistic  Christianity  is  compelled  to  accept  the  obsolete  regime  of 
types  and  shadows  as  equally  commanding  in  our  present  life  with  the 
Christian  regime  of  perfect  day. 

It  finds  the  Divine  character  delineated  in  the  old  Hebrew  Scriptures 
by  terrible  physical  symbols,  by  forcible,  but  to  our  present  enlightenment, 
degrading  anthropomorphisms.  In  the  Scriptures  of  the  Christian  dis- 
pensation, —  and  progressively  in  the  conceptions  which  have  been  de- 
veloped under  the  influence  of  its  implanted  spirit  in  the  general  con- 
sciousness of  our  age,  —  it  finds  an  altogether  higher  and  nobler  state- 


APPENDIX.  529 

ment  of  the  relations  between  mankind  and  the  Divine  —  of  the  char- 
acter of  the  latter,  and  the  destiny  of  the  former.  But  pledged  by  its 
original  mistake  it  is  compelled  to  carry  both  ideals,  according  them 
equal  prominence,  granting  them  equal  respect.  It  therefore  sets  about 
finding  a  compromise.  In  the  effort  to  make  them  fit,  to  reconcile  them 
where  they  clash,  it  finds  the  Judaistic  ideals  always  the  most  tyrannous, 
because  they  are  expressed  in  terms  most  vehement,  and  symbols  most 
physically  tangible.  The  result  is  that  Judaism  gets  a  great  deal  more 
than  its  share  in  the  statement,  and  the  hybrid  notions  resulting  from  the 
compromise  seem  more  properly  to  belong  to  the  Hebrew  than  the  Chris- 
tian period  of  the  world.  The  disciple  of  Judaistic  Christianity  insists 
that  his  rushlight  shall  not  be  blown  out  though  the  sun  stands  at  high 
noon,  and  holds  it  so  close  to  his  eyes  that  they  are  too  dazzled  by  its 
fire  and  bleared  by  its  smoke  to  see  the  sun  clearly. 

It  would  startle  the  old  Puritan  to  charge  him  with  the  ancestry  of 
Mormonism  —  but  Mormonism  is  certainly  the  outgrowth  of  those  Judaistic 
ideas  which  he  has  insisted  on  carrying  over,  past  their  fulfillment,  into 
the  life  and  thought  of  the  Christian  age.  Talk  with  an  intelligent 
Mormon  upon  the  subject  of  his  system,  and  so  long  as  he  does  not  touch 
upon  polygamy  you  will  be  irresistibly  reminded  in  all  that  he  says  of 
many  a  sermon  which  you  have  heard  from  the  representatives  of  Puritan 
ideas.  He  loves  as  well  as  Cotton  Mather,  or  his  intellectual  offspring, 
to  introduce  God  to  you  in  an  atmosphere  quaking  with  Hebrew  thunders. 
He  has  a  perfect  arsenal  of  fiery  clouds,  and  physical  hells ;  he  swathes 
all  his  metaphors  in  garments  of  mysterious  horror.  He  takes  the  Old 
Testament,  as  he  takes  all  the  Scriptures,  literally,  and  consistently  car- 
ries this  literal  interpretation  into  his  daily  life. 

Almost  without  exception,  the  Mormon  leaders  passed  their  childhood 
under  the  influence  of  the  sternest  Puritan  thought.  Both  Brigham 
Young  and  Heber  Kimball  were  brought  up  in  its  nurture  and  admoni- 
tion. They  look  back  with  reverence  upon  their  parents  and  teachers,  as 
having  prepared  them  for  the  reception  of  the  full  Latter-day  glory.  I 
am  far  from  charging  upon  Puritan  theology  any  intentional  share  in  the 
generation  of  Mormonism ;  still,  any  dispassionate  man,  pledged  to  no 
sect*  but  to  the  spirit  of  Christianity  in  general,  cannot  fail  to  perceive 
that  Mormonism  is  the  legitimate  outgrowth  of  its  intellectual  bias 
pushed  to  the  extreme.  Judaism  has  been  praised,  honored,  imitated, 
kept  alive  in  the  Christian  teaching  of  the  age,  until  it  has  at  last  found 
disciples  to  reconstruct  it  as  a  living  institution. 

It  is  curious  to  see  how  the  very  physical  circumstances  of  Mormonism 
are  a  copy  of  the  Jewish.  The  parallel  is  not  a  fanciful  or  accidental  one. 
The  Mormons  acknowledge,  in  some  points  intend  it,  themselves.  Kirt- 
land  and  Nauvoo  were  their  settlements  in  Egypt ;  Joe  Smith  was  their 
Moses ;  and  when  he  died  too  early  for  a  sight  of  the  promised  land, 
Brigham  Young  became  the  Joshua  who  led  them  all  the  way  home. 
34 


530  APPENDIX. 

They  have  founded  their  Jerusalem  in  a  Holy  Land  wonderfully  like  the 
original.  Like  Gennesaret  Lake  Utah  is  a  body  of  fresh  water  emptying 
by  a  river  Jordan  into  a  Dead  Sea  without  outlet  and  intensely  saline. 
The  Saints  find  their  Edomites  and  Philistines  in  the  Indians  of  the  des- 
ert, whose  good  will  they  can  only  keep  by  perpetual  tribute  under  the 
less  humiliating  guise  of  presents  (as  necessary  as  the  backsheesh  you 
give  to  a  Bedouin,  or  the  ransom  you  pay  to  a  brigand),  and  in  the  Gen- 
tile troops  of  Uncle  Sam.  The  climate  is  a  photographic  copy  of  the 
Judsean  ;  the  thirsty  fields  must  be  irrigated  through  long  seasons  of 
rainless,  cloudless  heat,  while  the  ridges  of  Lebanon,  here  called  the 
Wahsatch,  are  covered  with  snow.  The  timberless  plains,  the  wooded 
mountain  gorges  of  Judsea  are  here,  and  here  are  the  summer-shrunken 
streams,  the  dry  beds  or  "  wadies,"  which  mark  the  path  of  the  Syrian 
traveller.  In  the  City  of  Salt  Lake  biblical  imagery  is  perpetually  re- 
called to  the  mind  by  the  low  adobe  houses,  which  resemble  the  clay 
dwellings  of  Jewish  times,  and  by  the  thick  refreshing  shade  of  irrigated 
gardens,  where  the  inmates  of  the  houses  rest  from  the  heat  of  the  day, 
and  slake  their  thirst  with  the  delicious  juice  of  that  most  oriental  among 
fruits,  the  melon,  which  grows  as  luxuriantly  here  as  in  Palestine.  I  have 
elsewhere  referred  to  the  striking  illustration  of  that  passage,  "  He  turn- 
eth  men's  hearts  as  the  rivers  of  water  are  turned,"  when  in  such  a  gar- 
den I  saw  the  master  leading  the  precious  liquid  with  his  foot  to  the 
rootlets  of  some  favorite  plant  by  a  little  extempore  channel  from  the 
main  trenches. 

Nature,  in  Utah,  having  repeated  the  physical  conditions  of  Palestine 
as  closely  as  she  ever  repeats  any  of  her  work,  has  been  assisted  to  the 
utmost  by  the  energies  of  man.  Mormonism  is  intended  to  be  a  theoc- 
racy like  the  Jewish.  Mormonism  is  a  theocracy  so  far  as  human  agency 
can  make  one.  The  Mormons  have  shown  what  can  be  made  of  the  old 
Puritan  idea  carried  out  consistently  to  its  ultimate  conclusions.  If  the 
Jewish  notions  of  theology  are  good  for  the  nineteenth  century,  they  have 
reasoned,  why  not  the  Jewish  theory  of  government?  Both  being 
equally  of  Divine  ordinance  for  the  Jews ;  and  one  being  insisted  on  as 
binding  upon  the  conscience  of  the  nineteenth  century,  why  not  the  other  ? 
The  Puritans,  equally  with  the  Mormons,  assented  to  the  conclusiveness 
of  this  logic,  and  attempted  to  imitate  the  Jewish  theocracy  in  their  gov- 
ernment of  the  early  New  England  communities,  quoting  the  Old  Testa- 
ment to  any  extent  in  support  of  their  civil  ordinances  for  the  compulsory 
observance  of  Sabbath  (as  all  Christians  with  Judaistic  tendencies  love  to 
call  Sunday) ;  their  commission  of  penal  authority  to  the  hands  of  clergy- 
men, deacons,  and  other  ecclesiastical  officers  ;  their  whole  code  of  relig- 
ious pains  and  penalties.  But  the  Puritans  broke  down  in  one  important 
particular  where  the  Mormons  have  triumphantly  gone  on.  They  lacked 
one  essential  piece  of  the  theocratic  machinery  —  the  supernatural.  They 
had  no  prophets ;  no  miracle-workers ;  none  endowed  with  the  gifts  of 


APPENDIX.  531 

healing  and  of  tongues.  They  had  a  very  rampant  devil  to  be  sure  ;  and 
witches  innumerable,  who  in  partnership  did  innumerable  grievous  devil- 
tries and  sore  witcheries  ;  but  those  were  all  on  the  debit  side  of  their 
theocracy  —  a  supernatural  which  belonged  to  somebody  else,  and  repre- 
sented the  stock  in  trade  of  a  hostile  house.  Thus  they  came  gradually 
to  find  that  a  Jewish  theocracy  was  not  adapted  to  modern  times ;  that 
is,  their  children  so  found  it  —  and  little  by  little,  the  substitution  of  here 
a  piece  and  there  a  piece  of  governmental  enginery  resulted  in  quite  an 
enlightened  system  of  Republicanism,  such  as  prevails  in  the  greater  part 
of  New  England  at  this  day.  If  it  were  not  the  sorrowful  fact  that  men's 
religious  ideas  are  a  matter  of  much  less  essential  consequence  to  them 
than  their  ideas  of  material  well-being ;  and  that  they  will  worry  along 
with  a  spiritual  system  that  does  not  fit,  a  great  while  after  they  would 
have  found  intolerable  a  municipal  or  a  digestive  system,  or  even  a  pair 
of  boots  of  the  same  character,  the  inapplicability  of  the  Jewish  theoc- 
racy to  an  era  of  Christianity  and  civilization  would  have  been  discov- 
ered at  the  same  time  with  that  of  the  theocracy ;  and  then  we  should 
have  had  no  Mormonism. 

The  Mormons  have  been  better  off  than  the  Puritans.  Through  supe- 
rior gifts  of  inspiration  and  faith,  or,  as  skeptics  prefer  to  say,  of  "  cheek  " 
and  credulity,  they  have  acquired  a  supernatural  which  works  as  well  as 
any  in  modern  ages.  They  have  not  an  empty  shrine  like  the  Puritan 
theocracy ;  their  divinity  has  descended  to  the  tripod,  and  his  presence 
fills  the  Temple.  They  are  not  compelled  to  put  up  with  the  meagre 
make-shift  of  a  few  petty  selectmen  and  deacons.  They  have  wealth  of 
exorcists,  and  speakers  in  unknown  tongues  :  the  former  being  as  numer- 
ous as  the  Saints  possessed  of  powerful  animal  magnetism  ;  the  latter,  as 
they  are  not  compelled  to  translate,  susceptible  of  indefinite  multiplica- 
tion. They  have  prophets  and  apostles  whose  imposition  of  hands  is 
infallible ;  some  of  them  are  said  by  the  ungodly  to  take  away  whatever 
they  lay  their  hands  on,  be  it  portable  property  or  insupportable  pains  ; 
they  have  seers  who  wait  on  the  Lord  and  are  visited  by  angels  ;  but  a 
rule  prevails  similar  to  that  posted  on  the  walls  of  some  public  institutions, 
and  none  of  the  waiters  are  permitted  to  receive  anything  from  visitors, 
except  the  head-waiter  Brigham.  In  other  words,  though  the  doctrine  of 
open  communication  between  earth  and  heaven  is  recognized  by  the 
Saints,  the  only  person  in  the  Church  who  can  become  the  recipient  of 
infallible  revelations  is  the  President.  With  his  permission,  however, 
Heber  Kimball  *  or  General  Wells,  his  colleagues,  may  act  as  his  proxy. 

The  supernatural  element  is  used  with  comparative  infrequency.  The 
fact  that  they  possess  it  is,  generally,  enough  for  the  Mormons.  Now  and 
then,  on  occasions  of  great  excitement,  —  like  the  anti-Gentile  assemblies 

1  This  assertion  was  written  before  Kimball  died,  but  probably  holds  good  for  any 
successor  he  may  have  in  the  co-presidency.  It  may  be  as  well,  to  avoid  the  necessity 
of  any  further  explanation  on  the  subject,  to  say  here  once  for  all  that  the  entire 
Appendix  supposes  Kimball  still  living,  and  no  substantial  misapprehension  will 
occur  to  any  reader  keeping  this  fact  in  mind. 


532  APPENDIX. 

during  Johnston's  occupation,  for  instance,  —  a  Saint  is  suddenly  inspired 
to  speak  in  an  unknown  tongue.  A  friend  of  mine,  present  at  a  sort  of 
camp-meeting  called  together  near  Nephi  in  the  year  1857,  heard  one  of 
the  saints  address  the  audience  to  great  apparent  edification  for  nearly 
ten  minutes,  in  language  purporting  to  be  that  of  an  ancient  Lamanite 
tribe,  called  the  "  Children  of  Glawdulgrum."  My  friend  took  down  on 
the  back  of  an  old  letter  (the  only  note-book  which  happened  to  be  con- 
venient) a  few  snatches  from  the  part  which,  as  he  said,  interested  him 
as  much  as  any  of  it.  I  give  one  snatch  :  — 

"  Kravighi !  Karoom  I  Ro  eptepetla  hrancobolomei  degesh  mapsasal- 
bonor.  Hokoparuni  Keptepenil  senkandra.  Moipsdpagath  genendlis 
loluddgro  tolla  ?  Kedepdrkomal  uminu  pegesh  sokathddlgoni.  Nenope- 
temi  lalaptagro  ebo-dungruno.  Oheki  degesh  Wi  was  !  Wi  was  !  Mo- 
epne  Karoom  ?  Mopalpartogos  lubebe  bdttolob  lupete  bolobilandro  ? 
Manapalbonor  Kravighesseros  Wi,  bagamolu,  penetebangroni  —  solughel- 
depinpin  Wi  was  !  Wi  was  !  Hrancobolomei  degesh  epsekenkorugu 
kragashr  Molu  nongoddgragon  ?  Otse  degesh  —  Wi  was  !  Wi  was  !  " 

The  therapeutic  imposition  of  hands  and  the  exorcism  of  evil  spirits 
are  supernatural  gifts  oftener  employed  ;  and  their  exercise  has  been  at- 
tended with  really  marvelous  results  in  well-authenticated  cases  of  ner- 
vous and  mental  disease,  such  as  chorea,  epilepsy,  neuralgia,  hysteria,  peri- 
odic mania,  and  the  like  —  whose  cures,  however,  the  ungodly  classify 
with  the  phenomena  of  animal  magnetism  acting  upon  susceptible  organ- 
izations. Of  the  more  startling  class  of  miracles,  those  seeming  to  con- 
travene some  established  law  of  nature  and  verifiable  by  direct  experience, 
the  Saints  are  properly  chary.  Brigham  Young's  splendid  executive 
talents  insure  revelation  from  falling  into  disrepute,  since  a  project  which 
he  decides  to  have  accomplished,  even  in  circumstances  apparently  the 
most  unfavorable  to  its  realization,  is  either  inherently  so  feasible  or 
carried  through  by  such  tact  and  force  of  will,  that  his  followers  have  no 
difficulty  in  believing  that  he  acts  under  Divine  guidance. 

Possessing  the  supernatural  as  the  credential  and  prop  of  its  authority, 
the  Mormon  theocracy  wields  more  unlimited  power  than  any  despotism 
on  the  globe.  Here  again  it  is  a  copy  of  the  Jewish.  As  the  High-priest, 
after  consulting  the  Urim  and  Thummim,  was  infallible,  and  to  be  dis- 
obeyed only  on  pain  of  death  or  being  cut  off  from  one's  people,  so  is 
Brigham  in  any  case,  for  he  carries  his  Urim  and  Thummim  in  his  own 
breast  —  a  judgment  perpetually  flooded  with  divine  light,  and  always 
accessible.  He  is  therefore  the  concentrated  will,  on  all  subjects  which 
he  chooses  to  assume  the  right  of  deciding,  of  more  than  one  hundred 
thousand  people. 

He  nominally  occupies  no  despotic  place.  Many  a  Mormon  will  indig-  • 
nantly  deny  that  his  power  is  any  more  absolute  than  that  of  the  Presi- 
dent of  the  United  States.  The  external  shows  of  Republicanism  are  so 
far  preserved  that  the  unthinking  part  of  the  population  really  imagine 
themselves  under  a  free  government.  Their  head  is  a  president,  not  an 


APPENDIX.  533 

emperor ;  but  Louis  Napoleon  might  be  glad  if  his  supremacy  over  the 
French  were  a  fraction  of  that  wielded  by  Brigham  Young  over  the  Mor- 
mons. His  acts  are  called  neither  ukases,  nor  pronunciamentos,  nor  de- 
crees ;  but  no  Asiatic  tyrant  ever  issued  such  irresistible  expressions  of 
his  will  as  does  Brigham  in  publishing  the  orders  of  the  Church.  He, 
ostensibly,  is  nothing  but  the  Church's  mouth-piece ;  yet  as  the  Church  has 
no  other  mouth-piece,  and  the  Church  is  absolute,  Brigham  Young  is  the 
most  indisputable  tyrant  on  earth.  In  Japan  —  hitherto  supposed  the 
ideal  representative  of  a  pure  despotism  —  the  supreme  power  is  weak- 
ened by  division ;  the  spiritual  and  the  temporal  rulers  may  fall  out  and 
the  people  get  their  own  ;  but  Brigham  Young,  under  the  skillfully  painted 
disguise  of  "  the  Church,"  is  Tycoon  and  Mikado  in  one ;  he  holds  in  his 
hand  the  gathered  heart-strings  and  purse-strings  of  the  whole  nation,  — 
the  wires  which  control  and  move  the  mechanism  of  their  entire  interests 
for  time  and  for  eternity. 

A  page  of  illustration  is  worth  a  chapter  of  mere  statement.  Let  me 
suppose  my  reader  a  subject  of  the  Mormon  government,  and  take  him 
through  the  career  which  every  such  an  one  is  liable  to  run ;  showing 
him  the  nature  of  the  theocracy  by  the  manner  in  which  it  may  legiti- 
mately act  upon  the  individual.  I  will  expose  him  to  no  exceptional 
hardships.  I  will  make  him  the  victim  of  no  peculiar  oppressions,  such  as 
result  in  every  nation  —  even  in  our  own  sometimes,  as  we  must  blush- 
ingly  acknowledge  —  to  the  subordinate  who  incurs  the  dislike  of  the 
powers  that  be.  He  shall  suffer  only  from  the  natural  workings  of  the 
Mormon  system  —  in  most  respects  as  all  Mormons  suffer  daily  —  in  all 
respects  as  some  one  of  them  suffers  every  month  or  every  year.  I  shall 
exaggerate  nothing;  suppose  nothing  to  have  happened  which  has  not 
happened  in  every  essential  point  repeatedly,  and  been  known  to  happen 
by  the  great  body  of  the  Mormons  themselves. 

Mr.  Polypeith  (my  reader  can  well  excuse  my  hiding  him  under  a 
Greek  name  when  I  have  already  gone  so  far  as  to  take  the  liberty  of 
Mormonizing  him)  determines  that  he  will  leave  his  pleasant  home  in  the 
Eastern  States,  and  cast  in  his  lot  with  the  Saints  of  the  Salt  Lake  basin. 
He  learns  at  the  New  York  Agency,  by  one  of  whose  officers  he  was  con- 
verted, that  a  train  of  the  brethren  is  expected  to  leave  Atchison  or 
Omaha  early  during  the  next  month.  He  converts  all  his  property  into 
cash,  save  a  couple  of  thousands  which  he  spends  in  getting  his  own  and 
his  family's  outfit.  This  consists  of  a  large  Plains'  wagon  with  a  canvas 
tilt,  a  load  of  furniture  and  provisions,  a  few  cattle,  and  four  mules  whose 
value  will  be  about  doubled  when  they  reach  Salt  Lake,  or  more  than 
doubled  if  after  they  have  drawn  his  wagon  there  he  sends  them  on  to 
California.  The  Polypeith  family  penetrate  the  Wahsatch  by  Emigration 
Canon,  and  proceed  to  the  public  square,  situated  at  the  centre  of  the 
city.  Here  the  Church,  in  the  person  of  one  of  the  presidents,  or  an 
elder  appointed  by  Brigham,  —  perhaps,  as  happens  on  some  occasions, 
though  more  rarely  than  in  the  early  days  of  emigration,  in  the  person  of 


534  APPENDIX. 

Brigham  himself,  —  meets  Mr.  Polypeith,  makes  him  an  address,  and  gives 
him  the  right  hand  of  fellowship.  He  is  then  appointed  quarters  until  he 
can  look  about  him  and  prepare  for  his  family  permanent  accommodations 
consistent  with  their  circumstances,  and  the  will  of  the  Church.  His 
wagon  is  unpacked,  his  goods  are  stored,  and  if  it  be  warm  weather,  his 
cattle  may  be  delivered  to  the  charge  of  the  Church  herder,  who  makes  a 
note  of  their  marks  and  that  afternoon  takes  them  down  to  Church  Island. 
After  he  has  the  dust  washed  out  of  his  pores  and  the  bruises  of  his  jolt- 
ing ride  across  the  mountains  have  turned  a  healthy  color,  he  receives 
a  billet  from  the  Church  (Brigham),  commanding  him  to  report  him- 
self at  the  office  in  Prophet's  Block  at  11  o'clock  A.  M.  on  the  following 
Tuesday.  Obeying  the  mandate,  he  finds  himself  at  the  appointed  time 
in  a  small  plain  room,  like  that  appropriated  by  the  recorder  of  deeds  in 
a  rural  eastern  county,  where  he  is  confronted  with  the  Church  in  the 
shape  of  a  peculiar  but  pleasant-looking  man  in  pepper-and-salt  clothes, 
who  asks  him  a  variety  of  questions,  and  with  a  younger  man  who  puts 
down  his  answers  in  a  sort  of  ledger,  belonging,  when  at  rest,  on  a  shelf 
flanked  by  tin  boxes.  His  name,  age,  and  place  of  nativity  are  carefully 
noted ;  likewise  those  of  his  family,  and  their  total  number.  Then  the 
Church  (still  Brigham)  desires  to  know  the  avocation  he  has  pursued 
before  leaving  the  States.  He  replies  that  he  has  of  late  kept  a  grocery, 
but  was  formerly  a  cabinet  maker  by  trade  —  he  thought  of  going  on  with 
the  grocery  business  here.  Where  did  he  prefer  to  settle ;  in  Salt  Lake 
City  or  in  one  of  the  outer  settlements  —  Nephi,  Ogden,  or  Rush  Valley, 
for  instance  ?  He  had  meant  to  settle  in  Salt  Lake  City  —  the  chances 
for  his  kind  of  business  would  probably  be  better  there ;  besides,  there 
were  greater  advantages  there  of  society  and  for  the  education  of  his 
children.  The  Church  in  pepper-and-salt  takes  an  attitude  of  deep 
thought  —  hm  —  hm — will  Mr.  Clerk  reach  down  from  the  shelf  among 
the  deed-boxes  Book  B?  The  Church  whispers  —  there  is  more  thought. 
Mr.  Polypeith  waits  in  silent  veneration  until  the  Prophet  speaks  again. 

"  Brother  Polypeith  —  The  Church,  being  as  nearly  as  possible  depend- 
ent on  its  own  internal  resources,  is  obliged  to  distribute  them  with  dis- 
cretion so  as  to  use  every  brother  to  the  very  best  advantage.  The  Church 
has  no  room  for  any  more  grocers  in  Zion  itself.  That  branch  of  indus- 
try is  abundantly  stocked  at  present.  Without  prejudice  to  the  right  of 
changing  his  avocation  at  some  future  time,  if  he  is  still  so  drawn,  and 
the  Lord  opens  the  way  to  another  grocery,  Brother  Polypeith  may  be  of 
use  to  the  Church  in  his  former  profession.  Zion  needs  another  cabinet 
maker.  Or  (Book  B  is  consulted  again),  Brother  Polypeith  may  find 
occupation,  if  he  have  agricultural  leanings,  in  the  development  of  the 
indigo  of  Ziou.  Or,  there  is  a  grist-mill  sorely  needed  at  Tuilla.  But 
really  the  best  opening  seems  to  be  that  of  the  furniture." 

The  result  is  that  before  he  has  at  all  worn  off  the  novelty  of  his  posi- 
tion—  standing  a  full-grown  American  citizen  of  means  and  family,  to 
receive  absolute  dictation  upon  the  method  he  shall  adopt  to  employ 


APPENDIX.  535 

those  means  and  support  that  family  —  Brother  Polypeith  has  changed,  or 
gets  changed  for  him,  the  channel  of  his  entire  energies  and  his  future 
destiny  in  the  community  where  he  must  live.  He  entered  the  Church 
office  a  grocer,  to  go  out  of  it  a  cabinet  maker.  But  the  questions  are 
not  done ;  before  he  goes  he  must  answer  further. 

How  much  property  does  he  bring  to  Utah  ?  The  entire  savings  of  a 
small  tradesman's  hard  life,  he  answers  —  and  these  amount  to  the  sum 
of  twenty  thousand  dollars.  Is  Brother  Polypeith  ready  to  make  oath  to 
that  effect?  He  is  and  does  so.  Brother  Polypeith  is  then  informed 
that  the  Saints,  from  Brother  Brigham  himself  down  to  the  humblest 
cattle-boy,  own  nothing  —  that  the  Church  owns  all,  and  has  a  right  to  do 
what  it  will  with  its  own.  Furthermore,  that  twenty  thousand  dollars  is 
a  larger  sum  than  the  Church  can  availably  embark  in  the  cabinet  maker's 
trade  just  now;  part  of  the  sum  can  be  employed  for  the  interests  of  the 
.Church  better  elsewhere.  The  Church  will  accordingly  receive  from 
Brother  Polypeith,  to  be  employed  in  advancing  the  spread  of  the  king- 
dom, the  sum  of  five  or  ten  thousand  dollars,  as  the  case  may  be.  There 
is  no  invariable  rule  for  the  sum  taken ;  it  depends  on  the  needs  of  the 
Church,  or  the  wealth  of  the  individual,  and  on  the  amount  which,  con- 
sidering the  interests  of  the  Church,  can  be  beneficially  employed  in  the 
owner's  especial  branch  of  business.  The  opinion  of  the  chief  party  in 
interest  (as  we  should  call  him  according  to  our  unenlightened  Repub- 
lican and  common  law  ideas)  is  of  no  weight  whatever  in  contributing  to 
the  conclusion.  It  often  amounts  to  a  quarter,  sometimes  to  a  half  of 
the  entire  property  brought  into  Utah.  It  is  now  too  late  to  back  out  (I 
am  supposing  the  Polypeiths  already  baptized),  and  very  likely  there  is 
no  desire  to  back  out ;  the  Polypeiths  have  perhaps  known  long  ago  the 
Mormon  tenets  in  regard  to  the  residence  in  the  Church  of  all  titles  to 
individual  property,  or  if  they  have  not,  their  conversion  was  too  thor- 
ough to  be  shaken  by  the  discovery ;  at  any  rate,  here  they  are,  in  the 
Mormon  power,  of  their  own  free  will  Mormons  themselves ;  they  have 
taken  the  irrevocable  step  —  and  Mr.  Polypeith  has  no  alternative.  So 
he  forks  over  —  we  will  say  ten  thousand  dollars.  That  sum  forthwith 
goes  into  the  coffers  of  the  Church  (to  wit,  Brigham's  Herring  safe),  and 
neither  Mr.  Polypeith,  his  heirs,  nor  his  assigns,  ever  hear  from  it  in  the 
shape  of  principal  or  interest  thereafter. 

He  receives  the  ten  thousand  which  the  Church  graciously  accords  him 
from  his  own  former  possessions,  and  sets  up  the  furniture  business.  Dur- 
ing the  first  week  or  two  of  his  life  in  Salt  Lake  City  nothing  occurs  to 
make  him  sensible  of  the  difference  between  the  Mormon  regime  and  that 
under  which  he  lived  in  the  States.  Yet  none  the  less  is  he  becoming 
enmeshed  in  the  secret  toils  of  a  system  as  unlike  the  free,  open-air 
spirited  government  of  our  noble  republic  as  the  Council  of  Three, 
Jesuitry,  or  the  Vehm-Gericht.  Each  of  the  twenty  wards  into  which 
the  city  of  Salt  Lake  is  divided  has  a  ruler  of  its  own,  who  takes  charge 


536  APPENDIX. 

both  of  its  temporalities  and  spiritualities  with  the  title  of  bishop.  He 
exercises  supervision  over  the  tithes  due  from  citizens  under  him  to  the 
Church  treasury ;  has  general  charge  of  the  Church's  financial  interests  in 
the  ward,  and  registers  marriages,  deaths,  and  births.  But  surpassing  in 
importance  all  his  other  functions  is  that  of  secret  investigator.  He 
stands  responsible  to  the  Prophet  President  for  the  private  lives  —  the 
most  intimate  circumstances  and  doings  of  his  people.  It  is  a  principle 
of  Mormonism  that  the  President  must  be  omniscient  The  inmost 
secrets  of  every  household  must  be  revealed  to  him ;  he  must  know  what 
is  whispered  in  the  bride-chamber,  the  nursery,  in  the  consultations  of 
the  lawyer  and  the  doctor,  in  the  lover's  courtship,  and  on  the  dying  bed. 
Fouche'  never  knew  as  much  as  he  must  know,  nor  does  the  Superior  of 
the  Jesuit  College.  Fouche  bothered  his  head  with  religious  secrets,  the 
Superior  concerns  his  with  political  ones,  only  as  subsidiary  to  other  ends. 
Brigham  Young  must  know  all  secrets ;  and  to  attain  this  end  indefinitely 
multiplies  himself  through  bishops  and  their  subordinates.  The  bishop 
is  supposed  to  visit  the  members  of  the  Church  in  his  ward  in  the  New 
England  pastoral  sense ;  but  his  visits  are  sometimes  of  a  much  more  for- 
midable character  than  those  mild  interviews  for  prayer  and  religious  con- 
versation which  the  Eastern  clergyman  indulges  in  with  his  flock  at  peri- 
odic intervals.  The  bishop's  crosier  abroad  has  a  hooked  and  a  sharp 
end,  each  with  its  several  office,  —  "  Curva  trahit  mites — pungit  acuta 
rebelles."  The  Mormon  bishop  has  no  crosier,  but  he  can  prick  as  well 
as  pull,  and  some  of  his  visits  are  judicial  though  others  be  pastoral.  He 
has  proxies  or  deputies  whose  sole  business  it  is  to  furnish  him  with  that 
stream  of  knowledge  of  which  he  is  the  President's  channel :  plausible 
informers  who  enter  families  as  guests,  or  watch  them  through  windows 
and  key-holes,  like  burglars  making  their  preparation  for  a  "  crack ;  "  spies 
who  climb  trees  and  grape  trellises  to  eavesdrop,  or  lie  all  night  on  ladders 
at  second  story  shutters  ;  who  accept  confidences  to  betray  them,  and  em- 
ploy all  the  black  arts  of  the  detective  policeman  to  possess  themselves 
of  the  very  most  trifling  particular  which  may  sometime  be  needed  as  a 
clew  to  the  sinner  against  ecclesiastical  authority.  From  this  espionage 
even  the  most  innocent  life  is  no  freer  than  that  of  the  once  detected 
derelict.  The  Mormon,  like  the  Jew,  has  to  learn  that  the  God  of  a  the- 
ocracy is  a  jealous  God. 

In  the  States  Mr.  Polypeith's  family  has  always  been  such  a  blameless 
one  that  the  suspicion  of  suspicion  never  crosses  their  minds.  They  live 
with  the  same  guileless  freedom  that  has  characterized  their  behavior 
everywhere.  They  little  know  that  not  in  Milan  before  the  Austrians 
were  expelled,  not  in  Havana  at  the  present  day  —  that  nowhere  among 
hunted  Carbonari,  Mazzinists,  Fenians,  Huguenots,  Lollards,  or  proscribed 
French  Loyalists,  ever  existed  any  people  so  closely  watched  in  the  house 
and  by  the  way-side ;  so  minutely  known  in  all  their  goings  out  and  com- 
ings in ;  so  tracked  and  noted  and  booked  down  to  the  smallest  particular 


APPENDIX.  537 

of  their  conduct  at  bed  and  board ;  subject  to  such  scrutiny  of  the  hands 
they  clasp,  the  lips  they  kiss,  the  eyes  they  smile  into,  and  the  infinitesi- 
mal shades  of  expression  which  they  unconsciously  throw  into  clasp, 
kiss,  and  smile,  as  they  themselves  —  this  self-same  blameless  Polypeith 
family.  So  the  first  fortnight  goes  on  in  making  acquaintances  at  home, 
stocking  and  working  the  shop  on  Main  Street.  Mrs.  Polypeith,  who 
still  remains  without  a  colleague,  gets  along  pretty  well  at  Mormon  house- 
keeping by  the  aid  of  her  two  daughters,  after  discharging  her  "  help  " 
because  she  became  too  impudent  to  put  up  with,  as  frequently  happens 
with  her  class  at  Salt  Lake,  owing  to  the  fact  that  promotions  out  of  it 
to  a  wifely  rank  in  the  household  are  sufficiently  common  to  destroy  any 
vestige  of  distinction  between  mistress  and  servant,  which  among  the 
more  unsophisticated  may  have  survived  the  transit  of  the  Plains  and 
Rocky  Mountains.  It  is  not  to  be  supposed  that  a  buxom  Mormoness 
will  take  much  pains  in  doing  up  another  woman's  cap  when  she  is  occu- 
pied in  setting  her  own  for  that  woman's  husband.  Mrs.  Polypeith  has, 
however,  given  some  quiet  little  teas  in  spite  of  her  domestic  trials,  and 
Mr.  Polypeith  has  celebrated  his  birthday  by  a  modest  dinner. 

Early  in  the  week  following  the  dinner  he  receives  an  invitation  to  call 
on  the  bishop.  He  cheerfully  accepts  it  —  perhaps  flatters  himself  on 
the  courtesy  with  which  he  is  treated  by  so  high  a  functionary  thus  early 
in  his  saintship.  He  is  ushered  into  a  private  room,  where  he  finds  him- 
self confronted  with  the  bishop  and  two  or  three  elders  beside.  To  his 
astonishment  the  object  of  the  interview  is  not  hospitality  but  judgment. 
He  has  been  accused  by  somebody  (and  this  is  the  nearest  approach  to 
definiteness  with  which  he  ever  knows  his  accuser  ;  it  may  have  been  the 
"  help  "  who  was  dismissed  by  Mrs.  P.,  after  having  failed  to  win  Mr.  P.'s 
affections,  and  thus  seeks  to  avenge  the  "  spretse  injuriam  formae  ; "  it 
may  have  been  a  guest  at  the  dinner  party,  who  was  at  the  same  time  an 
agent  of  the  Mormon  Vehm-Gericht)  of  having  taken,  on  the  festal  occa- 
sion last  alluded  to,  a  drop  of  his  own  liquor  more  than  was  good  for  him. 
Does  he  deny  the  charge  ?  Does  he  ask  to  be  set  face  to  face  with  the 
informers?  Mormonism  never  "goes  back"  on  its  spies.  The  name  of 
the  accuser  is  of  no  consequence.  Besides,  he  is  brought  up  not  for  trial, 
but  for  sentence.  The  bishop  takes  care  of  all  his  flock  without  any 
assistance  from  themselves.  The  trial  has  been  conducted  with  as  much 
regard  to  his  interests  as  if  he  were  present,  and  the  brother,  more  espe- 
cially as  he  is  a  new-comer  and  this  his  first  offense,  will  be  dealt  with  in 
a  spirit  of  the  utmost  leniency  consistent  with  the  salvation  of  his  own 
immortal  soul  and  the  welfare  of  the  Church  —  that  absolute  theocratic 
proprietor,  which  owns  him  "  neck,  crop,  and  gizzard,"  from  the  tips  of 
his  boots  to  the  forelock  he  has  pomatumed  for  his  visit  to  the  bishop. 
Or,  does  he  make  a  plea,  as  the  old  common  law  hath  it,  "  in  confession 
and  avoidance,"  acknowledging  that  on  the  occasion  referred  to  he  may 
have  crooked  his  elbow  once  too  often,  but  then  the  superfluous  draught 


538  APPENDIX. 

V 

was  on  his  own  birthday,  in  his  own  house,  and  from  his  own  bottle  ? 
Ruled  out !  The  Church  knows  no  festivals,  no  privacy,  no  proprietor- 
ship but  its  own.  As  in  "  Le  Diable  Boiteux,"  so  in  the  romance  of 
Mormon  Life ;  as  there  with  Asmodeus,  so  here  with  the  Devil  (or  Angel, 
according  as  you  be  Saint  or  Gentile)  of  the  Latter-Day  Church,  all  the 
roofs  of  the  houses  come  off  like  the  cover  from  a  soup-tureen ;  he 
catches  the  cover  by  the  knob  of  the  chimney  or  the  cupola,  and  looks 
down  on  the  family  simmering  in  its  wickedness,  or  refreshes  his  nostrils 
with  its  odorous  steam  of  sanctity,  and  not  an  ingredient  in  the  pottage 
escapes  his  omniscience.  No  man's  house  is  his  castle  in  a  theocracy. 
Thus  was  it  with  the  Jewish  ;  thus  with  the  Puritan  ;  and  it  is  thus  with 
the  Mormon.  Acknowledge  that  God  can  have  deputies  who  rule  in  his 
name,  and  they  must  be  gifted  with  the  prerogatives  of  God.  He  does 
not  leave  the  citizen  at  his  door-sill  —  neither  can  they.  No,  Mr.  Poly- 
peith !  You  have  left  behind  you  the  pestilent  atheism  of  Republican 
government;  you  are  enjoying  the  blessings  of  that  system  which  so 
many  good  men  at  the  East  have  tried  in  vain  to  bring  back ;  you  are 
forced  to  be  religious  whether  you  will  or  no.  This  is  no  community 
where  a  man  with  impunity  can  go  home  and  get  drunk  in  the  bosom  of 
his  family.  So  Mr.  Polypeith  leaves  the  bishop's  with  a  face  longer  by 
an  inch  ;  a  mind  wiser  by  a  revelation ;  a  pocket  lighter  by  ten  dollars  — 
exactly  the  sum  which  he  often  used  to  read  of  in  the  police  reports  col- 
umn of  his  morning  paper  as  paid  promptly,  "  after  which  the  magistrate 
advised  the  offender  to  take  better  care  of  himself  in  future,  and  he  left 
the  court-room  in  company  with  his  friends  ;  "  or,  in  default  of  which, 
"  the  prisoner  was  sent  up  for  ten  days."  He  used  to  read  such  accounts 
with  a  shudder,  did  Mr.  Polypeith ;  or,  perhaps  he  thanked  God,  like  the 
Pharisee,  that  he  was  not  like  other  men  —  at  least,  not  like  this  victim 
of  the  Publican,  enjoying  his  visit  at  the  generous  city's  island  country- 
seat.  Now  he,  the  self-same  Eusebius  Polypeith,  stands  mulcted  in  the 
self-same  sum  —  a  degraded  man  —  mulcted  for  drunkenness  !  He  groans 
from  the  bottom  of  his  being  —  goes  home  —  and  does  not  tell  Mrs.  Poly- 
peith. Where  does  that  fine  go  ?  To  the  Church :  namely,  to  the  Her- 
ring safe  in  Brigham's  office. 

A  year  has  elapsed  since  he  came  through  Emigration  Canon.  He  has 
been  tolerably  successful  in  business.  One  morning  he  receives  another 
missive ;  the  bishop  wants  a  statement  of  his  profits,  concealing,  abating 
nothing,  under  the  penalty  of  Ananias  and  Sapphira  —  a  statement  veri- 
fied by  his  oath.  There  is  something  in  the  preparation  of  such  a  state- 
ment that  makes  any  man  brought  up  with  Republican  notions  wince 
and  feel  humiliated,  —  even  when  he  is  doing  it  as  a  war  necessity  for  the 
sake  of  supporting  a  National  Government  in  whose  stability  he  has  co- 
equal interest  with  every  neighbor  of  his.  I  do  not  believe  that  the  most 
patriotic  man  in  the  United  States  ever  receives  the  assessor's  peremptory 
order  to  return  his  income  without  an  instinctive  feeling  that  he  is  suffer- 


APPENDIX,  539 

ing  a  sort  of  grand  national  indignity  —  as  if  the  collective  sovereign 
people  had  given  him  a  collective  sovereign  tweak  o'  the  nose  ;  or 
searched  his  pockets  like  a  collective  sovereign  constable,  or  looked  over 
his  shoulder  while  he  was  balancing  his  ledger  with  a  collective  sovereign 
impudence  which  it  requires  all  his  philosophy  and  patriotism  to  excuse, 
and  of  which  he  says  to  himself,  as  he  sits  down  to  obey  the  assessor,  "  I 
do  hope  that  Congress  will  before  long  invent  some  less  obnoxious  way  of 
collecting  the  national  revenue  !  "  But  in  making  our  returns  to  the 
United  States  assessor  most  of  us  have  the  relief  of  considering  that  we 
voted  to  support  the  best  government  the  sun  ever  shone  on  ;  that  we  are 
in  reality  only  collecting  the  tax  from  ourselves  ;  that,  furthermore,  we, 
through  the  representatives  our  ballots  sent  to  Washington,  shall  have  our 
say  as  to  the  manner  in  which  the  money  shall  be  spent.  Mr.  Polypeith 
has  no  such  relief.  He  is  the  subject  of  a  theocracy.  In  1834,  long  be- 
fore he  had  heard  of  Mormonism,  Joseph  Smith  the  Prophet,  and  Oliver 
Cowdery  (one  of  the  three  witnesses  to  whom  the  Angel  of  the  Lord  showed 
the  plates  of  the  Book  of  Mormon),  met  in  Clay  County,  Missouri,  and 
made  a  covenant  with  God  that  they  would  henceforth  pay  into  his  treas- 
ury, for  the  advancement  of  the  heavenly  kingdom  upon  earth,  tithings  of 
all  that  they  possessed  —  imitating  the  Jewish  theocracy  in  this  respect  as 
closely  as  all  the  others.  Thenceforth  all  the  Saints  were  expected  to  con- 
tribute likewise,  and  the  custom  which  binds  Mr.  Polypeith  has  no  other 
foundation  than  this  thirty-two  years'  prescription.  Nor  has  he  any 
voice,  directly,  or  by  vote,  in  the  disposal  of  his  property  after  it  goes 
into  the  Church  coffers,  to  wit,  Brigham's  safe.  The  Church  uses  its  money 
—  i.  e.j  Brigham  spends  it  —  without  taking  counsel  of  the  taxed,  but  by 
Divine  command,  and  that  command  is  revealed  to  Brigham  alone,  while 
only  the  Divine  Revelator  has  the  right  of  looking  over  his  accounts. 
There  is,  therefore,  not  one  alleviating  circumstance  in  the  necessity 
under  which  Mr.  Polypeith  sits  down  to  make  out  his  exhibit  of  income 
for  the  bishop.  Nevertheless,  he  winces  his  way  through  the  task,  and 
sends  back  the  following  :  — 

1  Being  the  37th  year  of  the  Church 
"  SALT  LAKE  CITY,  July  24«A,  1866.     .     .    .  |     of  Jesus  Christ  of  the  Latter- 

J      Day  Saints. 
EUSEBIUS  POLYPEITH  :  Income  return  for  Year  ending  at  Date. 

Resulting  from  Cabinet  Ware  business $1,520.00 

Dividends  on  Stock  held  in  Railroad  Companies         .        •        •  125.00 

"         "      "        »     "  Insurance       "         ....  245.00 

Money  paid  Wife  by  executors  of  her  Mother's  estate  in  Mass.  300.00 

Total $2,190.00 

Attestatur,  E.  POLYPEITH." 

A  few  days  after  this  return  has  been  handed  to  the  Bishop,  Mr.  Poly- 
peith gets  his  order  to  repair  to  the  Tithing  Office  and  pay  into  the 
Church  treasury  (the  Herring  safe  again)  the  sum  of  two  hundred  and 


540  APPENDIX. 

nineteen  dollars.  Or,  it  is  possible  that  he  may  receive  instead  one  of 
those  pleasant  episcopal  invitations  with  which  he  became  acquainted 
earlier  in  the  year,  and  on  repairing  with  a  heavy  heart  to  his  pastor's 
house  find  out  that  the  terrible  charge  of  making  a  false  return  has  been 
lodged  against  him.  He  feels  as  guiltless  of  the  wrong  as  a  child  a 
month  old.  He  may  discover  that,  in  the  opinion  of  the  authorities,  he  has 
overvalued  the  original  cost  to  himself  of  some  of  the  articles  on  which  he 
has  estimated  his  profits.  In  this  case  he  will,  perhaps,  be  startled  to 
have  copies  of  his  wholesale  dealers'  charges  and  vouchers  presented  to 
him.  Or,  he  may  have  omitted  in  making  his  return  to  include  the 
advance  which  he  has  received  during  the  year  on  the  original  price  of 
a  pair  of  draught  horses  left  behind  at  the  East  to  be  sold,  whose  pro- 
ceeds were  forwarded  to  him.  The  transaction  has  totally  escaped  his 
mind  —  not  so  the  Church's  !  There,  in  black  and  white,  he  reads  all 
its  particulars  —  more  precisely  drawn  out,  it  may  be,  than  he  could  have 
done  them  by  referring  to  his  own  private  papers.  A  sickening  sensation 
comes  over  Mr.  Polypeith's  soul  as  he  realizes  the  omniscience  and  ubiq- 
uity of  that  power  into  whose  grasp  he  has  voluntarily  resigned  himself, 
irretrievably  —  forever !  If  he  is  really  innocent  of  all  intent  to  cheat, 
Brigham  reads  character  too  skillfully  not  to  know  it ;  and,  instead  of  the 
fearful  doom  which  awaits  such  as  are  fool-hardy  or  green  enough  to 
attempt  defrauding  the  great  Fraud  of  the  Universe,  —  the  outlawry,  the 
delivery  to  the  buffets  of  Satan,  the  vague,  unnamable  terrors,  the  lurking 
death,  —  he  gets  off  with  a  solemn  warning  and  a  mulct  which  may 
amount  to  the  duplication  of  his  tithes. 

Suppose  that,  instead  of  having  succeeded  in  his  annual  business  by  the 
time  the  next  tithing  day  comes  round,  he  has  in  reality  sold  nothing,  but 
has  accumulated  either  by  manufacture  or  importation  five  hundred  Bos- 
ton rockers.  He  has  no  money  to  give  the  Church ;  but  the  Church 
takes  toll  out  of  every  grist,  and  all  is  grist  that  comes  to  its  mill.  The 
Church  is  not  fastidious ;  it  will  take  fifty  of  his  five  hundred  rockers, 
and  call  it  square.  What  can  it  do  with  them,  d'you  ask  ?  A  Church 
founded  upon  a  rock,  one  might  think,  can  have  no  call  for  rockers,  but 
it  has.  Mr.  Polypeith  is  instructed  to  deliver  them  in  the  great  Tithing 
Store-house,  right  under  the  personal  eye  of  the  Church,  sell.  Brigham. 
Then,  if  he  has  never  had  occasion  to  call  there  before,  he  sees  a  sight 
which  surprises  him.  There  are  carts  and  rude  Utah-made  ranch-wag- 
ons standing  at  the  gate  to  unload  tithes  of  every  description  of  product 
created  by  human  industry.  The  shelves  and  the  deep  ware-rooms  of  the 
all-devouring  theocracy  groan  and  bulge  with  everything  which  it  is  con- 
ceivable that  mankind  should  sell  and  buy  on  this  side  of  the  Rocky 
Mountains.  Here  are  piles  of  rawhide,  both  cow  and  mustang,  or  even 
pig-skin ;  bins  of  shelled  corn,  and  cribs  full  of  corn  in  the  ear ;  wheat 
and  rye,  oats  and  barley ;  casks  of  salt  provisions ;  wool,  homespun,  yarn, 
and  home-woven  cloth  in  hanks  and  bales ;  indigo ;  cocoons  and  raw  silk ; 


APPENDIX.  541 

butter,  cheese,  and  all  manner  of  farm  produce ;  even  the  most  destructi- 
ble of  vegetable  growths,  —  not  only  potatoes,  turnips,  and  other  root  crops, 
but  green  pease  and  beans,  fruit,  and  young  cabbages ;  hay,  carpenters' 
work,  boys'  caps,  slop-shop  overalls,  hemp-rope,  preserves,  tinware,  sto- 
gies, confectionery,  adobe  bricks  and  tiles,  moss  and  gramma  mattresses  ; 
buckskin  leggins,  gloves,  moccasins,  hunting-shirts,  and  complete  suits,  the 
manufacture  of  which  the  Mormon  women  make  a  specialty,  arriving  at  a 
decree  of  excellence  in  their  preparation,  and  beauty  in  their  adornment, 
surpassed  nowhere  in  the  world,  —  not  even  among  the  Snake  Indians. 
These  are  but  a  minute  fraction  of  the  contents  of  the  Church  Tithing 
Stores.  I  have  seen  day  laborers  who  were  too  poor  to  pay  their  tithes 
in  any  lumped  form  at  the  end  of  the  year,  bringing  them  in  at  sundown 
in  the  shape  of  a  tenth  of  the  poor,  flabby-meated  gudgeons  which  they 
had  caught  in  their  day's  fishing  along  the  Jordan.  The  Church,  under 
the  wonderful  management  of  Brigham,  somehow  or  other  succeeds  in 
disposing  of  all  that  it  receives  in  this  way  to  the  best  advantage,  and  is 
not  only  a  self-supporting,  but  a  money-making  concern  of  the  most  bril- 
liant character.  By  consenting  to  receive  the  tithes  in  form,  wherever 
the  Mormon  finds  it  easier  to  bring  the  literal  tenth  of  his  possessions 
instead  of  their  money  value,  it  effects  three  most  desirable  ends.  It 
secures  the  certain  payment  of  its  tithes,  since  the  products  of  a  man's 
industry  are  tangible,  accessible,  unconcealable,  and  therefore  within  its 
grasp  as  no  notes  or  specie  can  be ;  it  acts  as  a  perpetual  stimulus  to 
Mormon  industry  by  affording  one  certain  outlet  to  every  man's  products, 
—  a  market  through  which  he  can  dispose  of  at  least  a  part  of  such  prod- 
ucts, however  loth  private  dealers  may  be  to  run  the  risk  of  buying 
them ;  and  it  adds  another  resemblance  to  the  old  Jewish  theocracy, 
which  tithed  the  property  of  the  people  in  kind,  to  the  multitude  of  simi- 
larities on  which  it  bases  its  claim  to  the  successorship  of  Israel  as  the 
repository  of  the  Urim  and  Thummim,  the  possessor  of  the  Original  Priest- 
hood and  the  Eternal  Truth,  and  the  sole  Architect  of  God's  temple  and 
kingdom  upon  earth.  At  the  same  time,  Brigham's  talents  as  a  Roths- 
child being  none  less  than  as  a  Moses  and  a  Richelieu,  the  Church  loses 
nothing  pecuniarily  by  taking  Brother  Clod's  cabbages,  and  Brother 
Polypeith's  chairs. 

Mr.  Polypeith's  diary  for  the  next  few  years  contains  nothing  more 
startling  than  the  marriage  of  his  two  daughters  to  a  well-to-do  elder  of 
the  Church,  possessing,  besides  five  hundred  head  of  cattle  and  a  nice 
ranch  in  the  region  of  Parley's  Park,  a  trifle  of  two  previous  wives,  who 
live  harmoniously,  not  being  able  to  quarrel,  as  one  of  them  understands 
nothing  but  Norwegian,  and  the  other  possesses  no  lingual  accomplish- 
ments beyond  her  original  Shoshonee.  To  Mr.  Polypeith  it  seems  a  little 
odd  at  first  to  have  a  man  paying  attention  to  both  his  daughters  at  once ; 
early  associations  are  difficult  to  conquer,  and  an  only  partially  regenerate 
right  leg  of  his  twitches  uneasily  at  the  memory  how  it  would  have  kicked 


542  APPENDIX. 

such  a  suitor  down-stairs  at  the  East ;  but  grace  triumphs  when  he  re- 
flects that  after  all  the  elder  does  not  mean  any  such  thing  as  trifling  with 
the  young  affections  of  the  girls,  since  he  proposed  to  Hannah  Rebecca 
on  Thursday,  and  to  Lucetta  Plumina  on  the  Sunday  following ;  more- 
over, it  is  a  great  deal  less  wearing  and  expensive  to  order  a  wedding  for 
two  and  get  one's  family  nicely  provided  for  in  a  single  evening,  than  to 
string  the  paternal  anxiety  along,  States-fashion,  through  two  separate 
courtships,  and  disburse  for  two  entirely  distinct  sets  of  presents  and  wed- 
ding-cake. So  he  says,  "Bless  you,  my  children — bless  you!  "  and,  to 
use  the  choice  patriarchal  vernacular,  the  elder  "  gits  "  with  the  lot. 

If  polygamy  at  any  time,  during  the  progress  of  these  occurences,  seem 
to  Mr.  Polypeith  any  harder  of  deglutition  because  the  two  wives  of  his 
saintly  son-in-law  stand  to  each  other  in  the  sisterly  relation,  he  may  lu- 
bricate the  morsel  by  that  sage  consideration  which  has  doubtless  been 
suggested  to  every  dissatisfied  person  since  the  foundation  of  the  world, 
"  How  much  worse  it  might  have  been."  He  may  have  made  the  ac- 
quaintance of  a  family  such  as  I  myself  became  aware  of  while  in  the 
Mormon  Zion.  Passing  with  a  very  zealous  believer  through  one  of  the 
streets  in  that  city,  I  had  my  attention  called  by  my  companion  to  a  com- 
fortable residence,  belonging,  apparently,  to  some  person  of  more  than 
average  condition  in  the  community.  "  There  !  "  said  the  gentleman 
emphatically,  —  "  there  lives  one  of  the  very  best  men  we've  got  in  Salt 
Lake  City."  "  How  so  ?  "  I  asked  him.  "  The  most  noble-hearted,  whole- 
souled,  liberal  fellow  I  ever  knew.  Doesn't  stand  at  anything  when  he 
can  do  a  generous  action.  Here's  an  instance.  Two  years  ago  his  part- 
ner in  business  died  insolvent,  leaving  two  widows  and  three  daughters 
without  a  leg  to  stand  on.  He  was  very  well  off  himself,  and  a  bachelor. 
So  what  does  he  do  but  go  right  over  to  his  partner's  house,  see  the  two 
widows  and  three  daughters  —  make  it  all  right*—  and  marry  the  whole 
of  'em.  That's  what  I  call  a  right  down  liberal  action  !  "  I  have  seen 
it  indignantly  denied  by  Mormon  defenders,  that  marriages  of  this  sort 
are  permitted  in  Utah ;  but  such  a  denial  on  their  behalf  would  be  scorn- 
fully repudiated  by  the  Mormons  themselves,  who  rather  favor  such  mar- 
riages than  otherwise,  on  the  same  ground  that  benevolent  and  sage 
old  slave-holders,  in  the  halcyon  days  of  the  Eastern  and  Southern  Patri- 
archal Institution,  used  to  buy  whole  families,  to  wit,  that  they  live  much 
more  contentedly  together  than  when  they  are  separated.  A  mother  and 
a  daughter  who  are  wives  of  the  same  man,  or  two  sisters  similarly  situ- 
ated, are  more  apt  to  be  patient  with  each  other  and  freer  from  jealousy 
than  strangers. 

I  must  now  give  a  page  of  Mr.  Polypeith's  diary,  which  is  so  painful 
that  he  himself  would  gladly  have  blotted  it  out  with  his  heart's  blood  — 
which  I,  indeed,  would  gladly  suppress,  were  it  not  that  I  am  writing  the 
truth  and  have  not  the  romancer's  privilege  of  yielding  to  sentimental 
motives.  Mr.  Polypeith's  family,  after  the  daughters  were  married,  con- 


APPENDIX.  543 

sisted  of  himself,  his  wife,  and  one  son  nineteen  years  old  —  a  fine, 
handsome,  frank-natured  young  fellow  who  for  some  time  had  been  a  val- 
uable assistant  to  his  father  in  business,  and  whom  he  was  rearing  to  take 
his  place  when  age  should  release  him  from  the  harness  of  active  life. 

Among  the  neighboring  families  was  one  of  an  elder,  whom  the  Church, 
shortly  after  Hiram  Polypeith's  nineteenth  birthday,  had  appointed  to  go 
forth  upon  a  foreign  mission  —  a  tour  for  the  collection  of  converts  in 
Sweden,  Denmark,  and  Norway,  which  would  keep  him  abroad  for  two 
years  —  indeed,  until  he  could  bring  a  ship-load  of  fresh  Saints  from  the 
Baltic  to  New  York,  and  thence  across  the  Mississippi,  and  the  Moun- 
tains to  Salt  Lake.  The  elder  was  a  well-to-do  man  of  fifty;  and  it 
might  have  seemed  just  as  advantageous  to  the  interests  of  Zion  to  send 
a  younger  brother,  with  youthful  energy,  the  "  roving  drop  in  his  veins," 
the  love  of  adventure,  and  the  desire  of  making  his  way  in  the  world,  to 
sustain  him  through  the  labors  of  a  mission,  and  less  extensive  family  ties 
to  bind  him  at  home  ;  for  besides  being  a  little  past  middle  age,  he  pos- 
sessed a  large  property,  five  wives,  and  a  score  of  children.  Among  all 
his  wives,  as  frequently  happens,  he  doted  most  on  the  last  and  youngest 
one,  to  whom  he  had  been  married  only  about  six  months  when  the  order 
came  for  his  departure.  The  mandate  grieved  him  sore,  but  theocracies 
know  no  sentiment  save  that  of  obedience  to  revelation,  and  though  he 
would  gladly  have  paid  the  expenses  of  a  proxy  and  stayed  at  home  with 
his  little  Zilpha  and  the  others,  he  was  compelled  to  bid  them  all  adieu 
and  fare  forth  one  morning  by  the  overland  stage. 

The  elder's  family  and  that  of  Brother  Polypeith  had  been  intimate 
from  the  first  year  of  the  latter' s  settlement  in  Zion.  They  frequently 
met  each  other  in  the  exchange  of  hospitalities.  Mrs.  Polypeith  was 
weekly  invited  to  tea  at  the  Salmudys',  and  the  Salmudys,  on  the  princi- 
ple of  its  being  inconvenient  to  move  large  masses,  were  reinvited  in 
squads  at  a  rate  which  went  through  them  all  in  about  one  lunar  period. 
When  the  elder  came  to  go  away,  Mrs.  Polypeith  mingled  her  tears  as 
she  had  her  tea  with  the  Mistresses  Salmudy ;  and  Mr.  Polypeith,  grasp- 
ing Elder  Salmudy's  hand  with  emotion,  told  him  that  during  his  ab- 
sence he  would  endeavor  to  be  such  a  friend  to  his  family,  as  he  would 
ask  Elder  Salmudy  to  be  to  his  in  case  their  positions  were  changed. 

There  was  one  member  of  the  Polypeith  family  who  did  not  partake  to 
the  full  extent  in  the  general  affliction  felt  at  Elder  Salmudy's  departure. 
This  was  Hiram  Polypeith  —  the  handsome,  spirited  lad  with  the  curly 
hair,  red  cheeks,  and  bright  boyish  eyes  —  who  had  his  reasons.  As 
the  Salmudys  lived  next  door  to  the  Polypeiths  on  the  right  side,  so  did 
the  Crandalls  live  next  door  on  the  left  side.  From  the  day  that  Mr. 
Polypeith  took  his  house,  his  garden  and  the  Crandalls'  had  opened  into 
one  another  by  a  little  wicket  in  the  partition  fence,  and  the  relation  of 
the  two  families  had  been  as  intimate  as  that  of  the  former  with  the 
Salmudys'.  The  wicket  almost  always  hung  ajar,  and  the  children  of 


544  APPENDIX. 

both  households  had  held  the  inclosures  in  common,  playing  tag  together 
around  the  gravel  walks,  dressing  dolls  and  making-believe  tea-fight  under 
extempore  houses  rigged  up  beneath  the  cool  shadows  of  acacias,  quaking 
asps,  cottonwoods,  and  rock-maples  transplanted  from  the  canons.  The 
youngest  child  of  the  Crandalls  was  a  pretty  golden-haired  girl,  with 
laughing  blue  eyes  and  merry  temperament  —  the  pet  of  everybody,  and 
a  gleam  of  sunshine  wherever  she  went.  She  was  the  little  sweetheart 
of  Hiram  Polypeith  from  the  time  they  first  played  together ;  she  was 
enough  unlike  him  in  every  respect,  except  the  fact  of  beauty  and  mutual 
attraction,  to  bring  out  the  strongest  positive  characteristics  of  the  boy, 
and  awaken  an  intense  feeling  of  chivalry  in  him,  which  manifested  itself 
in  every  way  —  from  fighting  her  battles  with  ruder  and  stronger  children 
to  carrying  her  tiny  dinner  when  she  went  to  school,  and  being  her  in- 
variable guard  of  honor  at  all  picnics  to  Black  Rock  or  the  Lake  in  the 
Mountains.  She  returned  his  feeling  with  one  of  absolute  confidence  and 
admiration  —  was  never  so  happy  as  when  she  nestled  against  his  side, 
and,  whenever  her  light  heart  thought  of  the  future  at  all,  never  imag- 
ined a  place  in  it  whose  centre  was  not  her  boy-gallant.  One  of 
their  most  frequent  plays  (as  I  suppose  is  the  case  with  all  children  of 
every  place  and  age)  was  "  getting  married  ;  "  and  the  romantic  tender- 
ness of  Hiram's  love  for  little  Zilpha  Crandall  was  shown  by  the  fact 
that  while  the  other  little  male- Saints  had  polygamic  plays,  he  never 
added  to  his  list  of  wives,  but  incurred  the  temporary  suspicion  or  even 
infantile  religious  persecution  of  his  mates  as  a  bad  Mormon,  by  remaining 
sternly  monogamic  and  marrying  Zilpha  over  and  over  and  over  again. 

But  they  could  not  always  remain  children  and  play  under  the  acacias. 
Zilpha,  being  just  Hiram's  age,  as  was  woman's  right,  blossomed  first, 
and  became  a  demure,  marriageable  little  Mormoness  in  long  dresses  (or, 
as  a  perverse  Gentile  friend  used  to  call  Mormon  little  girls,  a  "  Mor- 
moniculess,"  Mormon  little  boys  being  similarly  "  Mormonicles),  "  while 
Hiram  was  blushing  at  the  shortness  of  a  roundabout,  which  he  felt  still 
more  ashamed  to  exchange  for  that  uneasily  self-conscious  garment,  a 
coat  with  tails.  Before  either  of  them  knew  it,  the  golden-haired  beauty 
had  attracted  the  attention  of  that  multuxoriverous  mammal,  Elder  Sal- 
mudy,  —  a  splay-footed  quadrigenarian,  with  beetle  brows,  a  raucous 
voice,  which  one  would  have  as  soon  thought  of  as  a  frog's  for  the  vehicle 
of  love-making,  and  vast  expansiveness  below  the  epigastrium  without  ade- 
quate diameter  of  legs  to  sustain  such  a  superstructure.  Already,  too,  as 
the  Gypsy  Queen  denominated  Eector  Racktithe,  married  the  third  time, 
he  was  "  a  mighty  waster  o'  women,1"  having  four  Mistresses  Salmudy  to 
watch  for  his  martial  footfall  at  the  close  of  the  laborious  day.  To  adapt 
Louis  in  "  Richelieu,"  "  Fine  proxy  for  a  gay  young  cavalier !  "  But  why 
linger  over  the  hagglings  of  the  marriage  market  ?  Salt  Lake  is  no 
better  than  New  York  or  London,  though  it  does  pretend  to  be,  and 
Mormon  parents  sell  their  daughters  for  a  "  bon  parti  "  just  as  ours  do,  — 


APPENDIX.  545 

though  not  as  universally  as  was  the  case  in  the  much  desiderated  He- 
brew theocracy.  The  Crandalls  were  poor  —  Elder  Salmudy  was  rich  — 
Hiram  Polypeith  was  only  a  boy  —  Zilpha  was  an  obedient  daughter. 
She  cried  bitterly —  vowed  she  would  always  love  Hiram  —  and  married 
the  multuxoriverous  monster.  As  for  Hiram  —  he  gnashed  his  teeth  in 
secret  —  that  most  helpless,  uncommiserated,  most  laughed  at  of  all 
human  beings  —  a  boy  indulging  a  hopeless  passion.  What  could  he 
have  expected  ?  He  would  not  be  ready  to  marry  for  years  —  Zilpha 
was  a  grown-up  woman  —  did  he  suppose  she  was  to  be  bound  by  the 
plays  of  a  baby-house  ?  Pshaw !  So  he  crawled  into  the  straw  of  his 
father's  barn  and  wept  out  his  heart-break,  not  even  pitied  by  the  hen 
whom  his  grief  had  driven  off  her  nest  on  the  beam,  and  who  scolded  at 
him  with  the  Grossest  of  cackles. 

Time  will  insist  on  healing  such  wounds  for  us  though  we  swear  he 
shall  not,  and  despise  ourselves  as  brutes  for  finally  yielding  to  him. 
What  was  at  first  the  bitterest  ingredient  in  the  boy's  cup  —  the  fact  that 
his  little  Zilpha  lived  next  door  to  him  in  his  successful  rival's  house  — 
became  a  sort  of  sad  delight  —  gradually  a  delight  with  only  a  faint 
souppon  of  sadness,  for  he  saw  a  great  deal  of  her  without  the  elder, 
and  cherished  in  his  heart  that  fearful  torpedo,  liable  to  explode  at  any 
moment,  the  old  love  for  her  without  the  old  right.  Just  as  he  was 
beginning  to  go  about  his  work  with  some  sort  of  equanimity,  and  to 
answer  the  criterion  which  old  country  women  suppose  infallible  for  the 
question  whether  a  hopeless  passion  exists  or  not,  by  "  taking  his  three 
meals  reg'lar,"  Salmudy  received  the  mandate  to  depart.  Hiram  could 
have  gone  to  Brigham  Young  and  hugged  him  round  the  knees !  It 
almost  seemed  as  if  the  President  had  known  his  heart  and  intended  to 
do  him  a  personal  favor.  He  did  not  dare  to  accompany  his  father  to  the 
stage  office,  lest  instinct  should  be  too  strong  for  conventionalism,  and 
the  real  sunshine  of  his  heart  at  Elder  Salmudy's  parting  break  through 
the  hypocritical  clouds  upon  his  face.  So  he  stayed  at  home,  hiding  in 
the  barn,  and  through  a  knot-hole  saw  with  a  quickened  pulse  of  delight 
little  Zilpha  feeding  her  chickens  from  the  back  porch  —  heard  her  sing- 
ing blithely  while  she  scattered  the  crumbs  —  as  light-hearted  as  if  it  were 
indifferent  to  her  whether  her  six-months'  lord  went  to  Copenhagen  or 
Jericho,  and  it  would  be  quite  the  same  to  her  if  he  never  came  back  from 
either.  Already  he  began  to  calculate  the  chance*  against  the  elder's 
return  :  his  years  were  against  him  ;  the  journey  was  full  of  exposures  ; 
there  were  several  sea-voyages  to  make  ;  the  ocean  baffled,  there  were 
still  the  Sioux,  the  Arrapahoes,  and  the  Snakes  on  the  way  across  Plain 
and  Mountain  —  he  blushed,  catching  himself  suddenly,  just  about  to  enter 
a  chamber  of  thought  which  was  the  vestibule  of  murder. 

Papa  Polypeith's  promise  to  keep  a  fatherly  eye  on  the  bereaved  Sal- 
mudys  gave  Hiram  constant  occasion  to  run  in  next  door.  He  went  to 
see  if  his  mother  could  help  them ;  if  there  was  butter  wanted ;  if  the 
35 


546  APPENDIX. 

flour  was  getting  low  ;  if  the  cattle  were  getting  on  nicely  ;  if  his  father 
could  transact  any  business  for  them ;  if  they  wouldn't  like  to  read  the 
last  New  York  papers  ;  if  the  flower-beds  needed  weeding  ;  if  he  could  do 
anything ;  if  anything  was  wanted  —  yes  !  something  was  wanted  — 
wanted  all  the  time,  by  one  of  that  household.  And  O  !  perilous  gift ! 

—  he  brought  it  —  brought  all  the  strong,  passionate,  flaming  love  which 
he  fancied  he  had  raked  out  and  buried  under  —  the  love  which  by  God's 
law  was  his  right  and  hers  to  whom  he  gave  it,  though  man  had  set  on 
it  his  black  seal  of  execration. 

Neither  knew  when  it  came.  The  curves  of  danger  are  so  gradual  — 
its  inclines  so  smooth.  The  two  thought  they  were  reviving  innocent 
childhood's  playtime.  They  sat  under  the  acacias  as  of  old ;  they 
talked  of  the  houses  he  made  for  her  to  live  in,  and  laughed  at  their  baby- 
housekeeping.  Did  she  remember  when  he  stood  in  this  cedar  clump  to 
be  married  to  her  with  a  big  doll  for  a  bridesmaid  ?  did  he  remember 
what  he  did  as  soon  as  the  ceremony  was  over?  She  blushed  as  she 
recalled  it  and  dropped  her  moist  eyes  ;  he  folded  her  to  his  heart  and 
did  it  again.  But  they  did  not  feel  as  they  had  in  childhood  —  their  lips 
parted  slower — his  arm  was  harder  to  unclasp. 

Day  after  day  of  delicious  dreamy  peril  went  on,  in  house  and  garden 

—  part  of  it  right  before  the  eyes  of  the  parental  Polypeiths ;  but  they, 
remembering  what  attached  playmates  the  children  had  been,  and  like 
all  parents  so  slow  to  realize  the  fact  that  their  child  could  grow  up,  saw 
the  two  walking  and  talking  together,  saw  them  inseparable  in  their  stud- 
ies, their  amusements,  even  their  work,  so  far  as  they  could  help  each 
other,  and  never  warned  them  of  a  danger  that  they  themselves  did  not 
suspect.     Other  eyes,  however,  were  not  so  fondly  blind.     The  other  four 
wives  of  the  elder  had  never  been  one  with  that  excellent  man  in  his 
admiration  for  Zilpha.     One  of  them,  moreover,  was  the  spiritual  wife  of 
the  bishop  of  that  ward,  and  on  more  than  one  occasion  had  shown  her 
devotion  to  the  Church  and  to  the  man  who  should  be  her  husband  in  the 
celestial  mansions,  by  acting  as  eyes  for  him  and  the  Vehm-Gericht.     She 
was  bound  by  the  holiest  of  ties,  therefore,  to  let  no  iniquity  pass  her 
scrutiny  without  revealing   it  directly  to  the  bishop.     Within  the  first 
month  after  her  earthly  husband's  departure  she  had  repaired  to  the  house 
of  her  spiritual  one,  and  told  him  that  she  saw  mischief  hatching.     His 
only  reply  was,  "  Watch"    So  she  did  watch.    As  for  the  other  three,  their 
feeling  toward  the  pretty  little  Zilpha  was  of  a  less  tragic  and  religious 
nature ;  they  hated  her  and  waited  to  catch  her  tripping  because  they 
were  unpleasantly  homely;  had  long  and  slabby  or  stocky  and  dumpy 
figures  ;  were  without  grace  or  womanly  development  in  either  spirit  or 
physique;   were   bald,  sallow,  wrinkled,  uneducated,  uncouth,  while  in 
every  particular  she  had  the  impudence  to  be  exactly  the  reverse ;  because 
no  handsome  young  man  came  to  console  them  for  the  absence  of  Brother 
Salmudy,  therefore  they  hated  her  with  that  poisonous  petty  hate  which 


APPENDIX.  547 

nothing  can  create  in  a  woman  but  the  degradation  to  which  she  has  al- 
ways been  subject  in  a  theocracy.  Thus,  both  the  Church  and  Personal 
Jealousy  —  Artificial  Evil  and  Native  Evil  —  were  arrayed  against  the 
two  young  lovers,  and  searched  out  their  most  secret  communings,  their 
most  intricate  paths,  with  fiery  eyes  that  never  drooped  in  weariness  or 
were  damped  by  pity.  Yet  the  lovers,  wrapped  in  the  isolation  of  that 
heavenly  dream  which  made  them  the  two  only  human  beings  in  the  uni- 
verse, toyed  on  like  mating  wrens,  just  over  the  fanged  jaws  of  the  black- 
snake. 

As  innocent  of  evil  intent  as  Francesca  da  Rimini  and  her  lover,  the 
two  thought  of  nothing  but  the  fact  that  they  loved.  They  knew  that 
they  were  each  other's  —  they  had  no  room,  no  politic  coolness  for  the 
thought  how  to  get  it  acknowledged  that  they  were.  They  talked  as  if 
life  were  to  be  all  an  endless  now ;  as  if  Time  were  put  to  sleep  for  them, 
Age  forbidden  to  approach  them,  the  world  banished  from  them,  the 
elder  never  coming  back  from  Copenhagen.  What  they  would  do  when 
he  did  come  back,  was  a  thought  which  seemed  so  far  away,  that  to  have 
roused  them  to  it  from  their  trance  of  love  would  have  seemed  an  imper- 
tinence of  the  same  kind  as  waking  a  man  from  the  middle  of  his  night's 
sleep  to  decide  the  choice  of  a  name  or  a  profession  for  his  great-great- 
great  grandson.  They  did  not  even  reflect  that  Brigham  was  noted  for 
his  urbanity  and  kindness  to  unequally  yoked  wives,  and  that  Zilpha's 
unhappy  lot  might  be  changed  in  an  hour  by  going  to  his  office  with  her 
story  as  soon  as  the  elder  returned  and  had  a  chance  to  be  notified  of  her 
wish  for  the  separation,  so  that  he  should  not  feel  as  if  a  trap  bad  been 
sprung  on  him.  Marriage  they  did  not  think  of,  for  in  the  childhood 
with  which  their  present  lotus-eating  life  was  continuous,  had  they  not 
been  married  dozens  of  times  ?  How  many  times  we  tell  lovers  to  be 
prudent  —  prudent  even  if  only  for  the  sake  of  their  love  !  But  who 
obeys  —  who  can  obey  that  mandate  ?  There  is  something  in  love  itself 
which  takes  policy  out  of  the  most  politic  head  —  and  floods  the  veins 
with  childlike  heedlessness.  Love  is  so  necessary  to  the  lover's  exist- 
ence —  so  vital  an  air  to  him,  that  it  seems  as  if  all  around  him  must  be 
loving  too,  and  if  so,  that  they  can  have  no  time  and  as  little  heart,  to 
meddle  with  his  happiness. 

One  night,  Zilpha  stole  out  by  the  kitchen  and  the  back  porch,  from 
the  glum  society  of  her  four  elder  "  sisters."  Two  of  them  were  busily 
engaged  in  rocking  separate  cradles,  each  containing  a  young  Salmudy 
of  nearly  the  same  age ;  another  was  knitting  stockings  for  her  part  of 
the  family  feet ;  and  another  was  reading  the  "  Deseret  News'  "  report  of 
Brother  Brigham's  last  sermon,  which  a  face-ache  had  kept  her  from 
hearing  with  her  fleshly  ears.  Such  of  the  children  as  were  not  married 
and  permanently  out  of  the  house,  or  in  the  cradles  biting  the  gum  ring 
of  infancy,  were  either  in  bed  up-stairs  in  a  sort  of  phalansterian  nursery, 
or  out  in  town  somewhere  at  social  or  religious  meetings,  or  engaged  in 


548  APPENDIX. 

the  favorite  rural  occupation  of  New  England  male-evenings,  which  has 
survived  the  transit  of  the  Rocky  Mountains,  seated  around  a  stove  with 
their  feet  on  the  fender  ring,  squirting  tobacco  juice  between  the  legs,  or 
joining  with  idiomatic  old  men  in  muzzy  fur  caps,  talking  politics  and 
relating  reminiscences.  The  women  folks  and  the  one  inadequate  astral 
lamp  on  the  centre-table  seemed  one  and  all  to  need  fresh  filling  if  they 
were  ever  to  be  expected  to  shed  light  on  anything,  and  diffused  about 
them  such  an  atmosphere  of  dejection  that  one  would  think  they  might 
have  sufficiently  well  understood  why  a  bright  little  girl  like  Zilpha  could 
not  stand  it  any  longer  in  the  room  with  them.  Evidently,  however,  the 
tallest  and  stiffest  sister  could  not  accept  these  facts  as  sufficient  to  ac 
count  for  Zilpha's  retreat,  since  she  folded  up  her  "  Deseret  News  "  with 
spinster-like  precision,  and  followed  the  junior  wife  out  like  a  chaperone. 
She  was  too  late  to  find  her  in  the  kitchen  or  on  the  porch. 

The  moon  was  at  its  second  quarter  and  shed  the  peculiar,  uncertain 
lunar  twilight  characteristic  of  that  phase ;  melting  into  each  other  the 
lines  which  at  the  planet's  full  come  out  silver-edged  and  distinct  as 
strands  of  filagree ;  the  very  light  for  lover's  meetings,  since  it  does  not 
betray  them  to  their  enemies  like  the  broader  radiance,  but  tinges  their 
faces  to  each  other  with  a  sweet  enamoring  mystery,  and  reveals  them 
with  a  tender  half-disclosure  which  leaves  room  for  the  imagination, 
always  delighting  in  the  adornment  of  the  beloved  with  its  own  ideals,  to 
make  every  feature  and  expression  thrice  beautiful,  thus  giving  a  new 
meaning  to  the  poet's  words,  — 

"  As  darkness  shows  us  worlds  of  light 
We  never  saw  by  day." 

After  the  elder  girt  his  loins  and  fared  on  his  mission,  Hiram  had 
constructed  a  little  wicket  in  the  fence  between  the  Salmudys'  and  his 
father's  garden  like  that  which  existed  on  the  side  toward  the  Crandalls. 
Toward  this,  through  the  half-moonlight,  Zilpha  made  her  way.  Hiram 
stood  ready  to  open  it  for  her.  He  led  her  in,  latched  it  after  her,  put 
his  arm  around  her  waist,  and  led  her  down  the  gravel  walk  to  the  shade 
of  the  acacias.  For  an  hour  they  sat  murmuring  into  each  other's  ears 
the  sweetest  words  that  are  ever  spoken  on  earth;  they  forgot  time, 
space,  earth,  all  but  the  heaven  of  an  immeasurable  love  that  even  on  the 
outer  sill  of  its  vestibule  had  no  place  for  an  elder  of  fifty  with  four  other 
wives.  Before  the  last  good-night  embrace,  a  pair  of  those  red,  vengeful 
eyes,  by  aid  of  which  the  Church  is  omniscient,  turned  away  from  the 
sight  of  the  young  lovers'  rapture,  which  for  the  last  half-hour  they  had 
been  burning  through  the  shrubbery  to  mark  and  chronicle.  They 
turned  away,  and  a  pair  of  stealthy,  cat-like  feet  with  them,  just  in  time  ; 
for,  stricken  with  sudden  consciousness,  and  thinking  that  they  heard  a 
noise  near  the  house,  the  two  arose  from  beneath  the  shadow  of  the  aca- 
cia, and  hastened  to  the  wicket.  Just  in  time,  for  as  they  reached  it,  a 


APPENDIX.  549 

gaunt  dark  figure  unseen  by  them,  got  safely  within  the  screening  dark- 
ness of  the  elder's  back  porch.  After  breakfast  the  next  morning,  the 
lady  who  was  reading  the  "  Deseret  News  "  on  the  night  before,  called  upon 
the  bishop  of  the  ward,  who  cornplaisantly  granted  her  an  hour's  private 
interview.  All  such  readers  as  are  too  sensitive  or  squeamish  to  bear  the 
whole  truth  regarding  Mormonism,  whatever  depths  of  moral  ugliness  it 
may  disclose,  will  please  dismount  from  my  narrative  at  this  stopping- 
place  ;  and,  while  I  pursue  the  main  road,  cross  the  stile,  and  make  a 
short  cut  by  turning  over  a  leaf,  to  meet  me  and  get  aboard  again  a  few 
paragraphs  on. 

Neither  Zilpha  nor  Hiram  know  that  their  secret  has  been  discovered. 
The  former  goes  on  with  his  business,  the  latter  performs  her  share  in 
the  household  duties  of  the  absent  elder's  menage  —  they  both  meet  and 
part  as  blithely  as  ever.  To  be  sure,  the  young  girl  sees  sour  looks 
following  her  everywhere  from  those  whom  it  is  a  Mormon  "  triumph  of 
grace  "  to  call ."  sisters  "  ;  but  then  she  always  received  those,  and  hav- 
ing at  the  commencement  made  up  her  mind  to  pay  no  attention  to  them, 
is  not  now  troubled  by  the  question  of  more  or  less.  As  for  Hiram, 
neither  in  human  face,  nor  word,  nor  deed  —  neither  in  his  own  thought, 
nor  in  outside  warning  —  is  there  anything  to  tell  him  that  the  Philistines 
are  upon  him. 

Now  it  is  the  full  of  the  moon  —  a  fortnight  after  that  sweet  secret 
meeting  under  the  acacias  —  and  he  has  a  long  walk  to  take  for  the  as- 
sistance of  his  father's  business.  Old  Brother  Polypeith  has  to  pay  a 
note  to-morrow,  and  Hiram  must  go  on  a  collecting  tour  to  the  outskirts  of 
Salt  Lake  City  on  the  Camp  Floyd  Road.  He  promises  the  old  couple 
that  he  will  be  back  by  eleven  o'clock  at  the  furthest.  They  need  not  sit 
up  for  him  after  that.  If  he  comes  back  later,  he  will  stop  at  a  friend's 
of  his  who  lives  on  the  southern  suburb. 

He  carries  nothing  with  him  but  his  locust-switch,  —  a  mere  sapling, 
not  for  use,  but  for  ornament ;  hi&  revolvers  are  left  behind,  hanging  at 
the  head  of  his  bedstead  —  why  should  he  take  any  weapon  ?  He  has 
no  personal  enemies,  and  it  is  the  Mormon's  boast  that  Salt  Lake  City  is 
safer  after  dark  than  any  town  of  its  size  east  of  the  Rocky  Mountains. 
Moreover,  the  full  moon  makes  it  as  light  as  day,  and  if,  in  all  the  Mor- 
mon Zion,  there  could  be  such  a  lusus  natures  as  a  robber  or  an  assassin, 
he  certainly  would  not  select  this  time  of  the  month  to  ply  his  nefarious 
trade.  If  he  whistles  as  he  walks,  therefore,  it  is  because  he  remembers 
a  favorite  tune  which  Zilpha  used  to  sing  under  the  acacia  when  the 
"  Mormonicles  "  and  "  Mormoniculesses  "  were  married  in  play :  — 

"  Thus  the  fanner  sows  his  seeds ; 
He  stands  erect  and  takes  his  ease,  — 
Stamps  his  foot  and  claps  his  hands, 
Turns  around,  and  thus  he  stands  i  " 

The  air  is  full  of  blithe  influences.      He  walks  as  if  by  will,  without 


550  APPENDIX. 

muscle,  singing  and  whistling  by  turns  —  full  of  a  pleasant  peace,  and 
always  thinking  of  Zilpha.  He  bows  now  and  then  to  an  acquaintance,  — 
once  or  twice  speaks  to  an  intimate  one.  Everybody  likes  him  —  every- 
body seems  kind  to  him.  When  was  there  a  boy  not  yet  twenty  years 
old,  who  had  made  so  many  friends  and  no  enemies  ?  What  a  pleasant 
moonlight  this  is  !  There  are  no  clouds  over  it  here,  in  the  summer  sky, 
as  there  are  at  the  East.  He  looks  up  at  it  and  walks  unconsciously  — 
his  feet  on  the  earth  —  his  heart  in  the  heavens.  What  if  Elder  Sal- 
mudy  should  never  come  home?  The  sea  is  dangerous.  But  then, 
even  if  he  does  come  home,  the  same  power  which  sent  him  on  a  mis- 
sion can  take  away  from  his  horrible  old  bear-paws  the  one  ewe-lamb 
that  has  been  his  —  Hiram's  very  own  from  the  beginning.  That  is  one 
blessing !  Brigham  is  good  about  divorces.  What  a  sweet  little  home 
they  can  have  by  and  by ! 

"  Waiting  for  a  partner ! 
Waiting  for  a  partner ! 
Open  the  ring  and  let  her  in, 
And  kiss  her  when  you've  got  her  in !  " 

He  stops  whistling  again  to  twine  the  Wistaria  and  Madeira  vine,  the 
wild  honey-suckle  and  the  passion-flower  about  the  porch  of  that  sweet 
little  home  they  shall  have  —  when  —  when  —  and  then,  thinking  when, 
he  goes  off  into  a  reverie  too  sweetly  transcendental  to  put  into  words. 

The  town's  thickest  streets  are  reached ;  he  observes  for  the  first  time 
how  lonely  it  can  be,  —  how  dark  and  hidden  in  a  secluded  suburb,  even 
under  the  full  moon.  Two  furlongs  off  he  can  see  the  house  where  he 
must  present  his  largest  bill ;  its  candles  sending  out  through  the  panes 
two  red  streaks  to  struggle  with  the  great  silver  flood,  and  finally  get 
lost,  utterly  beaten  out  in  the  ocean  dropping  down  from  on  high.  Long 
shadows  of  barns,  black  as  midnight  for  all  the  moon,  —  nay,  by  reason 
of  the  moon,  whose  contrast  they  are,  —  lie  across  the  road ;  and  the  sand- 
heaps  along  the  fences,  but  half-lighted  through  the  picket-slits  and  rail- 
gaps,  are  checkered  with  oblongs  of  swarthy  penumbra.  Though  the 
moon  is  so  bright  above,  she  leaves  spots  below  in  which  it  is  dark 
enough  for  murder  to  be  done.  There  is  an  eddy  of  blackness  behind 
that  corner  ranch,  long  ago  deserted  in  the  troublous  "  Johnston  times," 
where  a  corpse  might  drift  ashore  out  of  the  silver  stream  that  washed 
the  road-way,  and  though  a  procession  passed  all  night  long,  not '  be 
seen  till  morning. 

"  Now  you  are  married,  you  must  obey  "  — 

Scarce  has  he  again  begun  to  whistle  the  old  memories  back  from  un- 
der the  acacia,  when  —  "  Phiu-u !  phiu-u-u  !  —  phiew  !  "  there  comes 
a  triple  whistle  from  another  mouth,  and  of  a  sharper  shrillness.  An- 
other, like  it,  answers  it  from  out  that  black  hollow,  where  all  mid- 
night and  blackness  seem  hiding  from  the  moon  ;  then  the  lad  hears  a 


APPENDIX.  551 

rush  of  feet,  then  a  sack  is  thrown  over  his  head,  his  mouth  is  stuffed 
with  a  wad  of  rags,  and  with  pinioned  arms  he  is  dragged  he  knows  not 
whither,  as  in  a  nightmare. 

Brother  and  Sister  Polypeith  sit  cosily  chatting  on  their  door-step  until 
after  the  appointed  hour.  It  is  past  eleven ;  neighbors  have  come  in  and 
joined  them  —  gone  home,  and  been  succeeded  by  others  who  in  their 
turn  went  home.  The  good  old  couple  finally  resolve  to  shut  up  the 
house.  They  are  prepared  for  the  alternative  of  Hiram's  failure  to 
return.  He  has  probably,  say  they,  spent  the  night  at  Brother  Labys, 
with  Joe.  So  they  enter  the  homestead  and  bar  the  door  ;  sure  that  their 
boy  will  find  it  no  hardship  in  such  a  summer  night  as  this,  to  nestle 
down  in  the  hay,  if  he  does  come  back  after  all.  For  a  little  while, 
tender-hearted  Ma  Polypeith  lies  awake  to  hear  her  boy  slam  the  gate ; 
but  that  sound  failing  her,  and  her  conscience  troubling  her  naught,  she 
presently  gives  over  watching  and  sleeps  the  sleep  of  the  just. 

The  next  morning  they  take  their  lonely  breakfast  with  regret ;  but 
certainly  without  alarm  at  Hiram's  absence.  There  is  no  doubt  about 
Papa  Polypeith' s  debtors,  and  if  Hiram  has  stayed  to  breakfast  with  the 
Labys,  he  will  go  right  round  to  the  shop  with  the  checks  in  time  for  his 
father  to  meet  the  notes.  So  saying,  Pa  Polypeith  lights  his  after-break- 
fast pipe  and  by  the  side  of  Ma  Polypeith  strolls  down  the  front  gravel- 
walk  to  the  gate,  intending  to  saunter  leisurely  down  to  his  Main  street 
place  of  business. 

His  hand  is  on  the  latch-rod,  when  an  old  and  coarse-looking  ranch 
wagon  stops  in  front  of  his  house.  A  Mormon  ranchman,  who  sits  on  a 
board  in  front,  reins  in  his  mules  with  one  hand,  and  silently  beckons 
with  the  other.  Hay,  wood,  vegetables,  an  order  for  cabinet  ware  ;  these 
are  the  ideas  that  flash  through  Pa  Polypeith's  mind  in  an  instant.  But 
no  !  The  contents  of  the  wagon  are  too  meagre  for  produce,  and  the 
ranchman  does  not  look  like  a  saint  well-to-do  enough  to  want  fresh  fur- 
niture for  his  house.  The  wagon-load  is  only  about  six  feet  by  two  and 
a  half,  and  it  is  covered  with  an  old  quilt.  Pa  Polypeith  advances. 
"  Well  ?  "  says  he  to  the  ranchman.  That  person  simply  points  with 
the  unoccupied  hand  over  his  shoulder.  Then  Pa  Polypeith  steps  up 
on  a  spoke  and  turns  down  the  quilt.  The  next  moment  he  falls  from 
the  spoke  and  grasps  the  side-board  with  both  hands.  "  What  is  it  ?  " 
cries  Ma  Polypeith,  curiously.  She  only  sees  his  back ;  and  the  white 
horror,  that  makes  his  face  suddenly  unmeaning,  has  spread  into  his  very 
heart  and  throat,  making  him  so  bloodless  that  he  cannot  answer.  She 
sees  that  something  strange  is  under  the  quilt.  She  runs  out  and  lifts  it 
for  herself.  She  gives  a  bitter  cry  that  might  tear  the  heart  of  a  hyena  — 
a  devil  —  anything  but  a  theocracy  ;  and  climbing  into  the  cart,  with  a 
man's  strength  takes  up  to  her  breast  her  only  boy. 

Dead  !  is  he  ? 

No  !  O  God,  no !  Worse  !  For  as  the  strength  which  was  not  quite  bled 


552  APPENDIX. 

out  of  him  while  he  lay  in  that  eddy  out  of  the  moonlight  just  enables 
him  to  say,  he  has  suffered  the  most  fiendish  wrong  which  Hell  can 
invent  —  the  wrong  after  which  the  leaving  of  life  itself,  is  a  demoniac 
refinement  of  wickedness.  The  theocracy  has  inflicted  on  him  that  ven- 
geance which  was  inflicted  on  Abelard  by  the  uncles  of  Eloise — has 
robbed  him  of  manhood's  self  because  he  loved  his  rightful  wife,  even  in 
the  clutches  of  a  wretch  who  had  four  wives  already  ! 

Hiram  lived — most  horrible  part  of  the  story  —  he  lived  !  Two  months 
pass  by  but  he  did  not  leave  the  house.  Others  who  had  suffered  from 
the  theocracy  like  him,  went  crawling  like  lepers  along  the  shady 
side  of  the  Salt  Lake  streets,  ashamed  to  meet  their  kind.  But  he 
would  never  know  the  scorn  of  men.  The  shock  which  his  mind  had 
suffered  had  made  him  a  confirmed  idiot.  The  horrible  truth  was  slow 
in  coming  to  the  ears  of  the  only  woman  he  had  ever  loved  in  his  life. 
But  it  did  come,  and  the  next  morning  she  was  found  quite  beyond  the 
reach  of  the  sour-faced  "  sister  "  who  had  done  her  duty  to  the  Church, 
beyond  Elder  Salmudy,  beyond  the  bishop,  beyond  the  theocracy  itself, 
with  an  empty  laudanum  bottle  by  her  side,  and  her  soul  under  trees 
more  unfading  than  the  acacias  ;  all  of  which  was  delicately  referred  to 
in  a  paragraph  in  the  "  Deseret  News,"  headed  "  Terrible  affliction  of  an 
absent  missionary,  —  Brother  Salmudy." 

Mr.  Polypeith  was  by  no  means  a  young  man  when  he  came  to  Utah, 
and  this  crowning  trouble  of  his  life  aged  him  to  such  a  degree  that  the 
most  intimate  of  his  Eastern  friends  would  not  have  known  him:  (Here 
the  reader,  who  from  motives  of  delicacy  has  objected  to  knowing  the 
worst  of  Mormonism,  may  remount  the  car  of  my  narrative.)  The  coun- 
try which  he  had  fondly  hoped  to  make  his  Paradise,  had  become  his  In- 
ferno. He  could  not  endure  the  sight  of  a  face  that  he  had  known  in 
Utah.  The  people  he  met  on  the  street  seemed  to  stare  at  him  sidelong, 
with  cold  curiosity,  or  humbling  pity.  He  had  no  heart  for  his  work  — 
he  missed  the  deft  hand,  the  cheery  whistle,  the  sunny  face  that  used 
to  be  beside  him.  He  should  never,  never,  never  have  any  child  to  suc- 
ceed him  in  his  business  now.  Everything  he  now  did,  was  only  for 
two  broken  old  people,  who  would  soon  be  in  their  graves.  Why 
should  he  work  to  keep  up  a  business  which  could  be  left  to  no  one  ? 
Neither  he  nor  Mother  Polypeith  had  any  interest  in  themselves.  All 
that  they  wanted  was  the  chance  to  scrape  together  enough  of  their 
property  to  leave  a  comfortable  trust  fund  for  the  support  of  their  poor 
wrecked  boy  when  they  should  be  gone  ;  and  to  get  into  some  quiet 
place  where  none  of  them  should  be  known  ;  where,  without  notice,  they 
might  nurse  and  tend  him  while  they  lived,  and,  seeing  him  provided  for, 
lay  their  tired  bones  in  the  earth. 

So  Mr.  Polypeith  sold  his  warehouse,  stock,  good-will,  tools  and  all, 
and  began  making  ready  to  go  to  California.  There  he  might  purchase 
some  quiet  little  ranch,  along  the  upper  waters  of  the  Merced  or  the 


APPENDIX.  553 

Sacramento,  and  lead  the  secluded  life  of  a  vaquero.  He  knew  nothing 
of  agriculture,  —  he  was  too  old  to  learn  ;  but  comparatively  little  train- 
ing was  necessary  for  the  pastoral  life,  and  the  three  of  them  could 
live  on  the  proceeds  of  the  yearly  cattle  sales,  which  was  all  that  he  now 
aimed  at  or  cared  for. 

Of  course  he  could  not  make  this  resolution  known.  He  distrusted  his 
very  daughters.  They  had  become  so  identified  in  all  their  interests  with 
the  theocracy,  and  that  vast  power  so  entirely  swallowed  up  all  private 
relations,  obliterated  all  personal  and  family  ties,  that  he  was  not  sure, 
poor  old  man,  that  even  these  children  of  his  own  loins  —  these  sisters 
of  a  worse  than  murdered  brother  —  would  be  faithful  to  his  secret.  They 
might  not  be  able  to,  even  if  they  would  ;  their  husband  was  high  in  the 
Church  ;  one  of  those  whose  duty  it  is  to  know  everything,  and  he  prob- 
ably possessed  means  of  marital  pressure  which  could  extort  the  truth 
from  the  two  girls,  like  a  Spanish  torture-boot  or  thumbscrew.  So  it 
would  be  not  only  wiser  for  the  three  who  were  going,  but  more  merciful 
to  those  left  behind,  if  he  kept  the  fact  of  his  intended  flight  a  profound 
secret  even  from  them ;  so  they  might  honestly  say  they  had  no  knowl- 
edge of  it,  and  be  spared  a  great  deal  of  trouble. 

Nothing  of  his  property  now  remained  unconverted  into  the  portable 
shape,  except  the  house  he  lived  in.  After  much  casting  about  for  a  way 
to  turn  this  into  money  without  exposing  himself  to  the  suspicion  of 
meditating  an  exodus  (and  he  needed  every  cent  he  could  raise  for  the 
accomplishment  of  his  purposes),  he  finally  hit  upon  a  way  by  which,  as 
he  congratulated  himself,  he  could  secure  the  double  end  of  saving  all  he 
owned,  and,  at  the  same  time,  lull  any  suspicions  which  might  have  been 
aroused  in  the  omniscient  mind  of  the  theocracy,  by  the  somewhat  hasty 
and  unexpected  sale  of  his  business.  A  rich  neighbor,  Elder  Steatite, 
had  repeatedly  solicited  him  to  sell  his  house,  and  still  retained  his  fancy 
for  it,  keeping  open  the  original  very  liberal  offer  he  had  made  for  it ;  and 
signifying  his  readiness  to  close  on  cash  terms  whenever  Mr.  Polypeith 
should  change  his  mind.  To  Brother  Steatite,  Brother  Polypeith  now 
repaired,  and  told  him  that  as  he  had  sold  out  his  business,  finding  it  too 
much  care  for  his  growing  years,  he  wanted  to  purchase  a  ranch, 
already  stocked,  in  the  Tuilla  Valley,  where  he  might  settle  down  com- 
fortably as  an  agriculturist  for  the  remainder  of  his  life.  For  this,  he 
needed  money,  and  if  Brother  Steatite  would  lend  him  something  less 
than  the  sum  he  had  offered  to  buy  the  house  outright,  he  would  give 
him  a  mortgage  on  the  latter  property  to  be  exchanged  for  a  deed  in  case 
he  found  anything  in  Tuilla  to  suit  him.  Brother  Steatite  was  pleased 
with  this  opportunity  of  getting  at  least  a  contingent  hold  on  the  property, 
and  loaned  him  what  was  a  pretty  fair  price  for  it. 

It  was  agreed  in  the  secret  consultations  of  the  sorrowful  old  couple,  that 
they  should  move  such  portions  of  their  household  goods  as  they  found 
desirable  to  take  with  them,  by  slow  degrees,  to  a  "  cache,"  or  hidden  place 


554.  APPENDIX. 

of  deposit,  among  the  sage  brush  and  rocks,  a  few  rods  off  the  emigrant 
road  that  led  by  the  way  of  Black  Rock  ;  and  whenever  a  trusty  teamster 
could  be  found  in  the  trains  that  weekly,  in  some  seasons  almost  daily, 
camped  outside  the  city,  he  should  be  let  into  the  secret  of  the  cache,  and 
hired  to  stop  and  take  up  the  articles  hidden  there  ;  and  then  carry  them 
on  with  him,  and  leave  them  in  store  at  one  of  the  Humboldt  settlements,  to 
be  called  for  by  the  Polypeiths  as  they  went  through.  Accordingly,  one 
by  one  they  moved  the  few  things  which  they  could,  without  attracting 
attention  to  their  absence,  Mr.  Polypeith  depositing  one  lot  in  the  cache 
each  time  that  he  went  on  his  pretended  prospecting  tour  to  Tuilla. 
Finally,  having  removed  all  they  dared,  they  made  ready  to  go  them- 
selves. They  had,  fortunately,  bought  a  team  of  mules  and  a  large 
wagon  for  lumbering  purposes,  two  years  before,  when  an  unusual  run  of 
good  luck  had  given  them  the  means  and  awakened  in  them  the  ambition 
to  extend  their  business,  —  so  the  purchase  of  that  essential  requisite  was 
not  now  to  add  another  to  the  chances  of  having  their  flight  suspected. 

They  stocked  their  wagon  with  provisions  for  two  months  ;  taking  the 
most  condensed  form  of  everything  which  they  could  get :  such  as  canned 
meats,  fruit  and  vegetables,  prepared  milk  and  coffee,  Shaker  apple-sauce, 
hard-tack,  and  soup-biscuit.  Though  the  expense  of  their  outfit  was 
considerably  greater  than  if  they  had  taken  the  ordinary  salt  pork  and 
beef,  they  were  able  thus  to  provide  for  a  much  longer  journey ;  and  in- 
sured themselves  against  the  disaster  of  running  short  on  the  terrible  tract 
which  they  must  cross  between  Salt  Lake  and  the  fertile  country  about 
Lassen's. 

They  came  to  their  last  Sunday  in  Salt  Lake.  At  first,  it  seemed  as  if 
they  could  not  bring  themselves  to  go  to  the  Tabernacle,  for  they  should 
see  the  girls  there ;  and  how  could  they  look  in  those  faces  which  had 
nestled  against  her  bosom,  and  his  bearded  cheek,  in  the  perfect  trust 
of  babyhood  —  how  could  they  clasp  those  hands  which  had  tenderly 
stroked  their  hair  ;  and  hear  the  voices  which  had  cooed  up  at  them  out 
of  the  cradle  —  knowing  that  it  was  for  the  last  time,  yet  not  disclosing  it 
to  them,  in  cries  of  heart-rending  agony  ?  But  they  must  do  it,  somehow. 
The  care  of  poor  Hiram  had  kept  them  at  home  a  good  deal  on  recent 
Sundays ;  and  the  theocracy  of  Mormonism,  like  that  of  the  Jews  and 
the  old  Puritans,  lays  a  severe  penalty  on  absentees  from  service.  Mr. 
Polypeith  had  once  before,  when  his  wife  and  children  were  ill  for  six 
weeks  with  typhoid  fever,  been  put  on  the  list  of  suspects,  and  possibly 
disloyal  persons,  who  were  to  be  dragooned  with  the  sharp  end  of 
the  Episcopal  crook  into  worshipping  God,  and  to  be  roundly  fined  for 
their  past  delinquencies.  They  could  ill  afford  now  to  incur  suspicion 
or  expense ;  so  Mrs.  Polypeith  went  to  have  her  heart  lacerated  in  the 
morning,  and  Mr.  Polypeith  in  the  evening. 

The  principal  morning  sermon  was  delivered  by  the  Prophet  himself, 
and  had  for  its  subject,  the  Church's  absolute  proprietorship  in  all  that 


APPENDIX. 

its  members  have  or  are.  Brigham  took  as  his  text,  "  Ye  are  bought 
with  a  price ; "  and  his  aim  was  to  make  his  flock  feel  grateful  that  the 
Church  was  graciously  pleased  to  accept  tithes  of  what  they  possessed, 
instead  of  stripping  them  naked,  as  it  had  an  undoubted  Divine  right  to 
do,  skinning  them  afterwards  to  tan  their  hides.  After  sermon,  the  prophet 
told  his  flock  further,  that  it  had  been  revealed  to  him  from  on  high  that  he 
must  raise  a  militia  regiment  of  able-bodied  saints  for  the  protection  of 
the  Territory  against  invasion  from  those  children  of  hell,  the  Gentile 
soldiery  ;  and  that  the  necessity  of  equipping  them,  and  purchasing  the 
most  reliable  kind  of  shooting-irons  for  their  use,  would  compel  him  to 
levy  on  them  an  extra  assessment  beside  the  tithes  already  paid  this 
year  —  it  would  probably  amount  to  one  fifth  the  amount  usually  collected 
in  tithing.  Whatever  it  was,  he  knew  his  people  would  hearken  to  the 
voice  of  the  Lord ;  and  he  wished  that  they  might  be  prepared.  Nobody 
grumbled  or  pulled  a  wry  countenance.  These  extra  assessments  to 
cover  suddenly  arising  needs  of  the  Church  were  of  too  frequent  occur- 
rence to  be  regarded  as  any  particular  annoyance.  The  people's  chronic 
religious  complaint  in  Utah,  is  hemorrhage  of  the  portmonnaie. 

After  elaborating  this  theme  a  little  further,  Brigham  suddenly  changed 
his  voice  to  a  sterner  tone,  and  a  look  of  grim  solemnity  settled  in  his 
face,  which  would  not  have  done  discredit  to  Balfour  of  Burley. 

"  Brother  Spotsby,"  —  said  he,  addressing  the  bishop  in  whose  ward  the 
Polypeiths  lived,  —  "I  have  something  to  say  to  you  which  makes  me 
very  sorry.  In  your  flock  there  is  a  goat  who  must  be  separated  from  the 
sheep ;  in  your  garden  there  is  a  root  of  bitterness  which  must  be  plucked 
up,  lest  many  thereby  become  defiled ;  in  your  division  of  the  body  of 
professors  of  religion,  is  one  who  must  be  delivered  over  to  the  buffetings 
of  Satan.  I  can  stand  an  open  enemy  !  I  can  endure  even  one  of  those 
sneaking  Gentiles  in  Kossuth  hat,  roundabout  with  braided  sleeves, 
skim-milk  blue  pants,  and  brass  soldier  buttons,  —  those  wolves  who  have 
entered  the  fold  of  the  faithful,  down  to  Camp  Floyd,  —  I  can  bear  any- 
body that  hates  the  Lord's  truth  right  straight  out,  fair  and  square  ;  but 
I  cannot  away  with  an  apostate  !  Brother  Spotsby,  there  is  a  man  in 
your  ward  who  must  be  dealt  with  without  budging  !  He  seeks  to  defraud 
the  inheritance  of  the  Lord ;  he  must  meet  the  fate  of  Ananias  and  Sap- 
phira !  Before  we  meet  again  in  this  place,  he  must  be  sent  to  hell  'cross 
lots  !  Brother  Spotsby,  after  meeting  you  may  come  round  to  my  office, 
and  I  will  further  impart  to  you  the  revelation  in  this  matter." 

Though  this  speech  moved  the  assembly  somewhat  more  than  it  had 
been  moved  by  the  news  of  an  extra  assessment,  their  emotion  was  but  a 
trifling  and  transient  ripple  compared  with  that  thundering  and  rocking 
breaker  of  feeling,  like  the  bore  of  some  East  Indian  river,  which  would 
have  swept  over  the  same  body  of  men  and  women  at  the  East  who  should 
hear  such  words  and  understand  their  full  purport.  There  were  some 
there,  and  among  these  was  Mrs.  Polypeith  —  some  women,  children,  and 


556  APPENDIX. 

new-comers  into  the  blessedness  of  the  Saint's  Rest,  to  whom  the  speech 
was  figurative  ;  to  whom  it  wholly  and  simply  portended  excommunica- 
tion, with  its  attendant  isolation  from  sympathy,  its  outlawry,  and  all  the 
evils  which  may  easily  be  imagined  as  attendant  upon  it  in  a  new  and 
sparsely  settled  country,  where  men  are  so  mutually  dependent  for  the 
safety  and  happiness  of  every  hour.  But  many  —  most,  indeed,  of 
those  who  heard  the  prophet's  address  to  the  bishop  —  knew  that  it  meant 
the  slaughter  of  one  of  their  fellow-men  ;  the  cool  premeditated,  pitiless 
killing  of  a  human  being  (he  might  be  a  stranger  to  some  of  them,  but 
was  also  doubtless  the  intimate  friend  of  some),  for  the  crime,  not  of 
taking  another's  life  into  his  private  hands,  not  even  of  sinning  against 
his  neighbor's  rights  of  property  ;  for  nothing  that  violated  natural  justice 
or  social  order,  but  for  changing  his  mind !  —  for  coming  to  the  conclu- 
sion after  a  long  experience,  it  might  be,  of  such  doubts,  perplexities,  and 
trials  as  had  agitated  many  a  breast  in  that  multitude,  that  Mormon- 
ism  was  not  God's  truth,  but  the  Devil's  lie  !  And  now,  when  the  tear- 
less, merciless,  unreasoning,  irresponsible  Sanhedrim  of  his  rulers  was  to 
prove  he  was  right  in  this  conclusion  by  slaying  him,  there  was  not  a 
man  in  all  that  theocracy-ridden  assembly  stirred  enough  to  rise  and 
protest  against  the  crime  of  his  brother's  blood  !  They  were  all  old  to 
such  impressions  ;  they  had  heard  and  known  such  things  until  every 
man's  heart  was  calloused ;  though  once  the  wave  of  passionate  indigna- 
tion which  swept  them,  listening  to  a  speech  like  the  prophet's,  in  its 
surging  rebound,  must  have  swept  the  whole  fabric  and  personality  of 
Mormonism  into  the  night  and  darkness  from  which  they  came  at  first. 
Thus  did  the  old  Jews  sit  and  see  Achan  murdered  with  all  his  innocent 
family ;  thus  did  the  young  man  Saul  stand  by  and  'witness  the  stoning 
of  Stephen,  holding  the  assassins'  clothes  and  consenting  to  the  martyr's 
death;  thus  did  the  old  Puritan  behold  the  tender  flesh  of  women 
seethe  and  crackle  in  the  fires  of  the  stake,  —  uttering  no  cry  of  horror, 
feeling  no  tear  wet  bis  stony  cheeks  ;  and  thus  do  men  lose  the  humanity 
and  the  divinity  of  their  natures  under  a  theocracy  everywhere. 

Mrs.  Polypeith,  as  I  have  said,  never  dreamed  of  the  meaning  which 
really  lay  in  the  prophet's  speech.  Possibly  she  thought  that  the  pro- 
posed excommunicate  might  be  her  husband  —  but  he  had  already 
resolved  to  excommunicate  himself;  and  before  the  sentence  could  be 
promulgated,  he  and  she  with  their  poor  boy,  would  be  where  such  a  sen- 
tence was  mere  empty  wind.  So,  in  her  tenderness  for  a  heart  already 
too  heavily  weighted,  she  carried  home  no  account  of  Brigham's  speech. 
Besides,  she  knew  as  well  as  anybody  can  know,  in  a  country  where  one 
hardly  dare  trust  his  own  sister  for  fear  she  may  be  a  spy,  that  there 
were  several  malcontents  in  the  ward  beside  her  husband  ;  some  of  them 
comparatively  reckless  and  much  more  prominent :  the  person  referred  to 
might  be  one  of  these. 

The  partings  were  over  ;  the  old  couple  had  not  betrayed  themselves 


APPENDIX.  557 

to  their  daughters.  Sunday,  Monday,  Tuesday  had  gone,  and  in  the 
darkness  of  Wednesday  morning,  about  one  o'clock,  the  three  Poly- 
peiths  left  their  Mormon  home  forever.  They  drove  slowly  through  the 
town,  so  as  to  attract  no  straggler  who  might  be  awake  at  that  hour ; 
and  were  soon  on  the  desolate  plain  beyond  the  fens  of  the  Jordan. 
Here  they  dared  to  go  m6re  rapidly,  and  before  dawn  broke,  had  reached 
the  shore  of  the  Lake  and  passed  the  point  of  the  Oquirrh.  Still  they 
did  not  tarry.  They  might  have  aroused  some  one  as  they  passed  Black 
Rock  Ranch,  and  they  felt  like  guilty  people  fleeing  from  a  murder; 
they  trembled  at  every  sound  of  the  lake  plashing  along  its  stony  beach, 
and  the  stunted  cedars  took  the  shape  of  crouching  men.  To  think  that 
these  were  American  citizens,  in  United  States  territory,  who  had  vio- 
lated no  natural  right,  no  law  of  their  country,  and  yet  they  were  obliged 
to  move  thus !  Let  us  not  look  abroad  for  the  missionary  objects  of 
Republicanism.  Austria,  a  more  terrible  Austria  than  that  which  crushed 
Venice,  is  nourished  at  our  own  breast. 

The  Polypeiths  had  seen  an  emigrant  train  bound  for  Oregon  pass 
through  the  city  about  noon  of  the  day  before.  They  were  in  hopes  of 
reaching  it  some  distance  this  side  of  the  Tuilla  settlements  ;  of  merging 
themselves  in  it,  and  so  travelling  on  unnoticed  by  any  of  the  Mormon 
ranchmen,  who,  seeing  them  alone,  might  possibly  identify  them  as  be- 
longing to  Salt  Lake,  until  they  had  got  safely  across  the  boundaries  of 
Utah.  A  little  before  sunrise,  the  mules  began  to  lag  ;  and  poor  Hiram 
awakened  from  the  vacant  melancholy  which  now  habitually  shrouded 
him,  to  moan  for  food  like  a  child.  So,  driving  a  few  hundred  yards  off 
the  track,  Father  Polypeith  picketed  his  mules  to  a  pair  of  stout  sage 
stalks,  to  let  them  browse  for  a  couple  of  hour?,  and  building  a  fire  of  the 
scrubby  sage  brush  and  grease-wood  he  had  collected  with  his  hatchet, 
assisted  his  wife  to  prepare  breakfast.  While  they  were  eating  this  meal, 
the  two  congratulated  each  other  on  the  thought  that  before  noon,  they 
would  in*all  probability  come  up  with  the  train  and  be  comparatively  out 
of  danger.  Their  old  hearts  glowed  with  a  momentary  warmth ;  they 
pictured  to  themselves  the  quiet  nook  which  they  might  reach  in  California, 
and  though  it  was  only  a  place  to  die  in,  still  they  had  suffered  such  entire 
loss  of  all  which  brightened  life,  that  this  prospect  was  a  kind  of  substi- 
tute for  happiness.  The  sun  was  two  hours  high,  when  they  again  put 
the  mules  in  the  wagon  and  resumed  their  journey. 

They  had  travelled  but  a  couple  of  miles  further,  when  they  came  upon 
fresh  tracks  ;  and  presently  they  saw  the  still  smoking  ash-heap  which 
indicated  a  recent  camping-place.  Here  the  train  had  probably  made 
its  night-halt,  and  from  the  looks  of  the  fire  and  the  hoof-marks,  it  could 
not  be  very  long  since  it  started  out  again.  They  took  fresh  courage, 
chirruped  to  their  mules,  and  went  on  as  briskly  as  the  sandy  road  and 
their  heavy  wagon  would  permit.  Rising  a  little  hillock,  they  had  their 
eyes  rejoiced,  by  seeing  through  the  clear,  dry  air,  which,  on  these  plains, 


558  APPENDIX. 

everywhere  out  of  the  immediate  neighborhood  of  the  Lake,  has  a  sort  of 
telescopic  property,  a  long  white  serpent  whose  joints  were  wagons,  taper- 
ing from  the  nearer  rear  to  the  far-off  van,  slowly  winding  under  a  thin 
tawny  cloud  of  dust,  and  through  the  gray  sage  about  two  miles  before 
them,  toward  the  Tuilla  Valley.  Their  hearts  leapt  into  their  throats 
with  the  joyful  thought  of  such  close  safety  ;  they  laughed  like  children  ; 
even  poor  Hiram  seemed  to  understand  them,  and  snapped  his  fingers 
over  his  shoulder,  as  if  defying  the  Saints  and  the  whole  theocracy  they 
had  left  snoring  behind  them  in  Salt  Lake  City. 

Descending  the  opposite  slope  of  the  hillock  they  lost  sight  of  the 
train,  but  knowing  that  every  step  brought  them  nearer  it,  considering 
the  leisurely  way  in  which  emigrants  travel,  it  kept  its  place  as^a  stimu- 
lant in  their  fancy's  eye,  and  they  cheerfully  pushed  their  mules  through 
the  sand,  sure  of  overtaking  their  escort  before  it  reached  Tuilla.  Their 
way  now  led  through  a  narrow  pass,  with  a  low  rocky  ledge  projecting 
from  the  bench-land  on  either  side  of  them,  shaggy  with  sage,  and  broken 
into  fantastic  crags  and  notches.  Mr.  Polypeith  sat  alone  on  a  cush- 
ioned board  across  the  front  of  the  wagon ;  his  wife  and  son  were  comfort- 
ably lodged  upon  bags  and  mattresses  under  the  tilt,  with  a  pile  of  boxed 
household  wares  for  the  back  to  their  seat.  Just  as  they  turned  the 
corner  of  the  pass  and  were  again  emerging  upon  the  open  sage  plain, 
a  sharp  crack,  and  "  ping  !  "  broke  the  golden  morning  stillness ;  the 
old  man's  hands  went  up  and  the  reins  fell  from  them ;  then,  without  a 
word,  he  fell  backward  into  the  wagon,  while  a  red  rivulet  trickled  over 
his  temple  and  dropped  from  his  gray  hairs  into  the  lap  of  his  wife. 
With  a  shriek  that  might  have  pierced  a  fiend's  heart,  she  caught  him 
to  her  breast  and  dragged  him  back  upon  the  mattress,  —  sprung  to  the 
board  and  caught  the  reins  ;  but  before  she  could  lash  the  team  into  a 
gallop  two  bull-necked  wretches  with  painted  faces  had  seized  them  close 
by  the  bits,  and  drawing  each  his  revolver,  fiercely  ordered  her  to  dis- 
mount. But  strength  failed  her.  Her  brain  reeled ;  and  only  less  dead 
than  her  husband,  she  fell  upon  his  stiffening  body,  clasping  Hiram  in 
her  arms.  The  assassins  drew  the  mules  to  the  side  of  the  road,  secured 
them,  and  entered  the  wagon.  They  lifted  the  dead  man  and  threw  him 
out  into  the  brush  as  if  he  had  been  the  carcase  of  a  beast.  Then  they 
tore  the  boy  from  his  mother's  unconscious  grasp,  and  sneering  at  his 
blank  face  of  mindless  terror,  tumbled  him  to  the  ground  after  his  father. 
Not  even  age  and  the  helplessness  of  woman  found  mercy  from  them.  The 
mother  was  dragged  from  the  wagon  after  the  son,  and  pitched  in  a  limp, 
unresisting  heap  upon  the  corpse.  Hiram,  ignorant  of  all  that  was 
doing,  first  stood  and  looked  curiously  on  his  prostrate  parents,  then 
obeying  the  instinct  of  mere  animal  fear,  turned  to  flee  into  the  sage. 
One  of  the  assassins  deliberately  raised  his  pistol,  and  as  he  was  running, 
shot  him  through  the  back.  As  he  lay  weltering  in  blood  and  struggling 
in  his  death-agony,  his  moans  pierced  through  his  mother's  unconscious- 


APPENDIX.  559 

ness  and  reached  her  heart.  She  began  to  show  signs  of  returning  from 
her  swoon. 

"  Look  out,  Bill !  "  spoke  one  of  the  Danites  hurriedly ;  "  the  old 
woman's  a-comin'  to.  Why  not  make  a  job  of  it  ?  —  she's  no  use ! 
What'll  we  do  with  her,  anyhow  ?  " 

"  That's  so  1  "  replied  the  other.  "  We  can't  take  her  back  ;  there's 
nowhere  for  her  to  go  to,  and  she'll  raise  worse  hell  with  the  Gentiles  than 
any  o'  the  tribe,  you  bet.  I  believe  it's  only  doin'  the  Church  justice, 
and  her  a  mercy,  to  send  her  to  Californy  too,  alonger  the  rest  'o  'em. 
Here  goes,  anyhow  "  — 

She  had  opened  her  eyes  and  raised  herself  on  one  palm  ;  in  this  posi- 
tion, looking  out  of  glassy,  unmeaning,  bedazed  eyes,  like  one  waking 
from  a  nightmare.  The  last  speaker  coolly  put  his  revolver  to  her  ear, 
pulled  the  trigger,  and  the  last  of  the  Polypeiths  had  forever  escaped 
from  the  theocracy.  The  Danites  dragged  the  three  bodies  out  a  hun- 
dred rods  into  the  brush,  made  a  great  heap  of  sage  and  grease  wood, 
laid  their  victims  on  it,  and  setting  the  whole  on  fire,  calmly  sat  near  and 
smoked  their  pipes,  making  blasphemous  jokes  the  while,  till  every 
earthly  trace  of  their  crime  was  consumed.  This  final  act  of  the  horrible 
tragedy  over,  they  turned  the  heads  of  the  mules  and  drove  them  back 
toward  Salt  Lake,  arriving  there  the  next  day.  The  wagon  and  its  con- 
tents went  into  the  Church  store-house,  to  be  sold ;  while  the  entire  sum 
of  money  resulting  from  the  conversion  of  the  Polypeiths'  property, 
found  in  a  belt  around  the  old  man's  body,  was  passed  directly  into  the 
iron  safe  in  the  Prophet's  office.  The  married  daughters  only  knew  that 
their  parents  and  their  brother  had  fled  from  Utah  ;  —  whither  they  went, 
how  far  they  had  gone,  and  what  had  become  of  them,  they  never 
learned,  for  the  Church  not  only  allows  its  members  to  have  no  secrets 
from  itself,  but  keeps  all  its  own  as  inscrutably  as  the  Sphinx.  Thus  ends 
the  story  of  the  Polypeiths.  And  the  promise  which  I  made  when  I 
began  it,  I  can  now  assert  that  I  have  kept.  I  have  made  not  one  single 
statement  which  is  either  false  or  exaggerated  ;  have  supposed  nothing 
to  happen  whose  parallel  has  not  repeatedly  happened  in  Utah. 

If  the  wholesale  assassination  of  the  Polypeiths  stagger  the  belief  of 
any  calm  Republican  Christian,  dwelling  at  the  East  without  the  pale  of 
theocracy,  what  will  he  think  of  the  massacre,  universally  known  in 
Utah,  of  a  whole  wagon-train  of  emigrants  on  their  way  to  California  ? 
I  have  before  referred  to  this  bloody  affair,  and  will  now  briefly  fulfill 
my  promise  to  give  its  details. 

In  May,  1857,  Parley  Pratt,  one  of  the  family  whose  name  figures  so 
conspicuously  in  the  Mormon  annals,  —  a  man  of  superior  education  and 
marked  ability,  who  has  contributed  many  hymns  besides  numerous  other 
productions  to  the  literature  of  the  Latter-Day  Church,  —  was  slain  in  Van 
Buren  County,  Arkansas,  by  a  citizen  of  that  State  named  Hector  McLean, 
for  having  proselyted  McLean's  wife  and  taken  her  to  himself,  during 
his  apostleship  in  the  Cherokee  Nation  Country. 


v 

560  APPENDIX. 

This  act,  and  the  fact  that  McLean  was  largely  aided  in  the  pursuit 
and  capture  of  his  insulter  by  residents  of  that  part  of  Arkansas,  greatly 
incensed  the  Mormons  against  the  people  of  that  State,  and  determined 
them  upon  taking  speedy  vengeance  for  the  killing  of  Pratt,  who  was  very 
popular  in  Utah. 

Their  opportunity  did  not  arrive  until  the  next  autumn.  On  the  4th 
of  September  a  train  of  150  Arkansas  emigrants,  comprising  many  entire 
families,  on  their  way  to  California,  with  about  sixty  Avagons,  a  large  herd 
of  horses,  mules,  and  beef-cattle,  and  the  entire  stock  of  household  goods, 
provisions,  and  merchandise  for  barter,  usually  carried  by  such  trains, 
amounting  in  value,  as  was  estimated,  to  nearly  $200,000,  reached  a 
spring  and  camping-ground  at  the  west  end  of  the  Mountain  Meadow 
Valley.  Here  they  were  surprised  and  attacked,  while  corraling  their 
stock  inside  a  circle  of  wagons,  as  is  customary  when  on  the  halt,  by  an 
overwhelming  force  of  men  in  the  garb  and  paint  of  Indians.  Here  I 
must  digress  a  little  for  explanation. 

In  every  Mormon  settlement  the  traveller  finds  a  number  of  men  with 
long  black  hair,  dark  skins,  and  black  eyes,  whose  slouching  gait,  sidelong, 
restless  look,  and  entire  style  of  make-up  so  suggest  the  native  savage 
that  he  might  easily  mistake  them  for  half-breeds  tamed  to  the  life  of  a 
white  community.  They  are  in  reality  pure-blooded  white  men,  be- 
longing to  the  Mormons,  and  selected  on  account  of  their  strong  natural 
resemblance  to  Indians,  as  well  as  their  love  of  adventure  and  skill  in 
adapting  themselves  to  savage  modes  of  living,  as  go-betweens,  to  con- 
duct the  intercourse  of  the  Mormons  with  the  tribes,  whom  they  pretend 
to  regard  as  former  true  believers,  and  call  by  the  pretentious  title  of 
their  Lamanite  brethren.  These  men  usually  know  several  of  the  Indian 
languages,  are  enured  to  fatigue,  fine  fighters  and  hunters,  cunning 
in  every  branch  of  forest-craft,  acquainted  with  the  mountain  trails  as 
thoroughly  as  the  Indians  themselves,  and  devote  themselves  especially 
to  keeping  up  friendly  relations  with  the  savages  ;  part  of  the  time  living 
in  their  dens  with  them,  making  them  presents  contributed  by  the 
Church,  conciliating  them  in  every  way,  and  in  many  instances  acquiring 
unbounded  influence  over  them.  Whenever  the  Mormons  want  a  cat's- 
paw  for  purposes  so  nefarious  that  their  own  appearance  on  the  stage  of 
accomplishment  would  make  them  obnoxious  to  the  whole  world ;  when 
they  want  an  exploring  party  cut  off,  a  mail  rifled,  a  Gentile  settlement 
raided  on,  or  wholesale  assassination  and  plunder  committed,  these  men 
have  only  need  to  stain  their  faces,  strip  themselves  to  skin  hunting-shirt, 
or  breech-clout  and  moccasins,  and  drumming  up  a  sufficient  party  of 
the  savages  they  have  brought  under  their  control,  to  lead  them  out  to 
loot  and  massacre.  I  believe  that  in  the  earlier  part  of  this  work  I  have 
referred  to  atrocious  expeditions  of  this  kind  in  which  (as  in  the  Sweet- 
water  raids,  for  example)  a  large  number  of  the  seeming  Indians,  undis- 
tinguishable  from  true  savages  in  any  other  respect,  were  detected  to  be 


APPENDIX.  561 

Mormons,  from  their  using  German,  Irish,  and  other  white  brogues  in  con- 
versing with  each  other  during  the  onslaught.  Such,  at  least  in  large 
part,  were  the  Indians  who  attacked  the  emigrants  at  Mountain  Meadow. 

For  about  a  day  the  brave  Arkansians  kept  off  their  murderers  by 
lying  behind  their  embanked  bales  and  boxes,  with  their  wagons  corraled 
in  a  circle  around  them,  their  women  and  children  inside  of  this  rude 
extempore  fortification ;  and  using  their  rifles  vigorously  all  the  time. 
Their  enemies  however  had  much  the  best  of  them,  for  they  could  lie 
almost  entirely  out  of  sight  in  the  brush,  and  were  besides  between  the 
emigrants  and  water,  so  that  the  latter  and  their  families  suffered 
severely  from  thirst.  Still,  though  vastly  their  superiors  in  number,  the 
savages  did  not  gain  an  inch.  They  would  probably  have  been  obliged 
to  retire  disheartened  without  accomplishing  their  object,  had  not  some 
of  the  Mormons  thought  of  a  stratagem  by  which  they  succeeded  as  they 
never  could  have  done  by  force. 

Just  at  this  juncture,  the  beleaguered  Arkansians  had  their  eyes  glad- 
dened by  the  sight  of  an  approaching  body  of  white  men,  who  had  not  before 
appeared  on  the  scene,  and  seemed  to  be  strangers  crossing  the  mountains 
and  wholly  unconnected  with  the  attacking  party.  After  a  parley  with 
the  Indians,  the  latter  ceased  firing  long  enough  to  let  them  go  into  the 
emigrant  camp  and  have  an  interview.  They  told  the  Arkansians  that 
they  were  settlers  in  the  neighborhood  who  had  always  conciliated  and 
been  friends  with  the  Indians,  and  that  they  possessed  so  much  influence 
with  them  that  they  had  persuaded  them  to  cease  hostilities  and  let  the 
emigrants  proceed  under  their  (the  whites')  escort,  if  they  would  only  as 
a  concession  to  the  exasperated  feelings  of  the  savages  permit  that  escort 
to  take  possession  of  their  arms  and  ammunition.  The  Indians,  they  said, 
had  recently  lost  some  of  their  most  valuable  men  by  the  hand  of  whites, 
who  murdered  them  in  cold  blood  and  out  of  sheer  wantonness,  so  that  it 
was  now  with  the  greatest  difficulty  they  could  be  persuaded  not  to  attack 
every  white  man  they  met. 

The  reasoning  and  propositions  of  their  new-found  friends  appeared  so 
plausible,  and  their  disposition  so  friendly,  that  after  consultation,  the 
Arkansians  concluded  to  accept  their  advice,  and  deposited  with  them  all 
the  arms  and  ammunition  belonging  to  the  entire  train.  Scarcely  had  they 
stripped  themselves  of  their  means  of  protection,  when  at  a  prearranged 
signal,  all  the  savages  rushed  in,  and  joined  by  the  white  men,  —  among 
whom  the  well-known  Mormon  Elder  Haight  seems  to  have  been  the 
most  prominent,  —  began  butchering  the  helpless  men,  women,  and  chil- 
dren ;  —  nor  did  they  stop  pursuing  them  for  several  miles,  and  keeping  up 
a  running  fire  all  the  way,  until  they  had  killed  120  or  more  of  the  train. 
The  last  of  the  unfortunate  men  managed  to  get  to  Muddy  Creek,  forty  or 
fifty  miles  away,  but  was  tracked  by  the  insatiate  devils  and  shot  down. 
Some  of  the  deeds  of  the  white  savages  rivaled  anything  in  the  annals 
of  Indian  cruelty  ;  such,  for  instance,  as  the  case  of  one  young  girl,  who 


562  APPENDIX. 

was  caught  by  the  hair  of  her  head  while  running,  and  as  she  knelt  cry- 
ing for  mercy  to  her  Mormon  captor,  had  his  bowie-knife  drawn  across 
her  throat  from  ear  to  ear.  The  smallest  children,  boys  and  girls,  from 
earliest  infancy  to  ten  years  of  age,  were  spared  by  the  assassins  and  dis- 
persed among  the  settlements,  to  be  taken  into  various  Mormon  families  and 
brought  up  in  the  Mormon  faith.  Seventeen  of  these  were  afterward  found 
by  Mr.  Forney,  whom  the  government  empowered  to  investigate  the  matter, 
and  returned  to  their  parents'  friends  in  Arkansas.  The  wagons,  cattle,  and 
goods  were  parted  among  the  Mormon  actors  in  the  massacre,  and  no  suc- 
cessful effort  at  searching  out  any  portion  of  this  property  had  been  made 
when  I  left  Salt  Lake.  One  wagon  which  had  belonged  to  the  train  was 
then  in  the  barn  of  a  well-known  Mormon  citizen,  and  another  well-to-do, 
much  esteemed  Saint,  who  had  participated  in  the  massacre  and  had 
taken  one  of  the  children  to  bring  up,  I  met  in  the  streets  of  Salt  Lake 
repeatedly.  He  looked  as  jolly  as  you  please,  as  if  neither  conscience  nor 
digestion  troubled  him. 

The  position  which  the  United  States  government  holds  in  Utah  may 
be  inferred  from  the  fact  that  although  the  prominent  participators  in  this, 
one  of  the  blackest  outrages  of  modern  times,  are  perfectly  well  known  in 
Utah,  they  go  about  among  their  fellow-men  to  this  day  with  unblushing 
and  fearless  impunity.  The  Hon.  Mr.  Cradlebaugh,  former  delegate  from 
Nevada,  laid  the  case  before  Congress  in  a  speech  eloquent  with  terrible 
fact,  and  a  United  States  Court  (held  I  believe  at  Camp  Floyd,  under  the 
protection  of  Johnston's  guns)  was  convened  to  try  the  offenders,  but  as  a 
matter  of  course  they  all  slipped  through.  The  cases  had  to  go  before 
a  jury,  and  the  panel  had  to  be  drawn  from  among  the  Mormons  them- 
selves. If  there  happened  to  be  one  Gentile  juror  drawn,  it  was  only  at 
the  risk  of  his  life  that  he  could  vote  guilty ;  and  if  he  did,  his  comrades 
would  be  certain  to  disagree  with  him.  It  is  evident  that  until  martial- 
law  is  proclaimed,  no  Mormon  can  ever  be  punished  in  Utah  for  a  crime 
against  a  Gentile,  —  Gentiles  having  no  rights  there  which  a  Mormon  is 
bound  to  respect.  I  am  not  advocating  the  declaration  of  martial-law  in 
the  Territory  ;  of  the  necessity  which  justifies  such  an  extreme  measure 
I  do  not  pretend  to  be  a  judge ;  but  I  am  sure  that  unless  the  United 
States  intends  to  give  over  the  entire  Territory  to  the  possession  of  a  sin- 
gle sect,  and  virtually  forbid  all  citizens  who  do  not  belong  to  that  sect 
from  settling  in  the  Territory ;  if  it  ever  intends  that  its  citizens  shall  be 
equally  protected  everywhere  within  its  boundaries,  their  form  of  relig- 
ous  belief  notwithstanding :  if  it  does  not  intend  to  cede  to  the  settlers 
of  every  new  territory  as  part  of  their  local  franchise,  analogous  with 
state  rights,  the  power  to  establish  despotism  more  cruel  than  any  in 
Asia  or  in  Europe,  and  compel  all  new-comers  to  choose  between  bowing 
their  necks  to  the  yoke,  being  assassinated,  or  abandoning  their  claims  in 
the  territory :  then  the  United  States  Government  will  be  compelled  to 
take  the  opposite  horn  of  the  dilemma  and  open  courts-martial  in  Utah  for 


APPENDIX.  563 

the  trial  of  all  such  desperadoes  as  now  threaten  Gentile  life  in  Utah  with 
the  certainty  of  acquittal  by  a  jury  of  their  peers. 

Doubtless,  trial  by  jury  is  a  palladium  of  liberty ;  but  in  preserving 
the  palladium  let  us  be  sure  that  we  are  not  holding  it  as  a  screen  for 
murder  to  stab  behind  ;  let  us  take  care  lest  we  leave  no  liberty  for  the 
palladium  to  shield. 

If  we  can  sufficiently  purge  ourselves  of  indignation  and  other  personal 
passions  to  look  at  Mormonism  with  the  calm  intellectual  eyes  of  the 
philosopher,  it  will  present  to  us  the  most  curious  object  of  study  which 
the  world  at  present  affords.  Its  life  is  an  hourly  anomaly.  The  fact 
that  the  system  continues  to  exist,  is  as  strange  a  one  as  it  would  be  if 
the  Falls  of  Niagara  should  begin  pouring  up  instead  of  tumbling  down. 
As  we  have  sought  to  show,  it  is  a  violation  of  all  moral  and  intellectual 
laws  of  gravitation.  It  is  a  perpetual  defiance  to  the  progress  of  the 
age.  We  are  irresistibly  driven  to  the  questions,  What  upholds  it  ? 
What  has  carried  it  through  trials  well-nigh  as  fiery  as  any  which  ever 
assaulted  the  Christian  Church,  and  placed  it  in  a  position  of  such  pros- 
perity that  it  is  capable  of  setting  at  naught  successfully  the  will  of  the 
Government,  the  spirit  of  American  Republicanism  and  the  strongest 
people  upon  earth  ? 

Its  element  of  cohesion  is  not  to  be  found  where  superficial  students 
usually  look  for  it,  —  in  the  fact  that  its  system  provides  full  swing  for  the 
baser  passions  of  mankind  in  the  institution  of  polygamy.  One  of  the 
strongest  of  the  Mormon  leaders,  Colonel  Kinney,  is  not  a  polygamist  at 
all,  and  the  institution  itself,  so  far  from  being  an  original  element  in  the 
system,  is  but  a  recent  importation  into  it.  Besides,  the  Mormons  are  by 
no  means  a  grossly  sensual  people ;  quite  as  far  from  that,  everybody 
who  has  lived  among  them  will  bear  them  witness,  as  the  old  Puritans  or 
Covenanters.  Their  polygamy,  of  course,  offers  opportunity  for  the 
gratification  of  sensual  men  without  the  stigma  which  in  civilized  and 
Christian  countries  attaches  to  sexual  inconstancy ;  but  it  is  a  stern 
religious  institution,  not  a  voluptuary  one.  The  grace  and  poetry  of 
Athens,  the  sensuous  languor  of  oriental  lands,  are  entirely  absent  from 
it.  The  Mormon  is  a  polygamist  not  for  indulgence,  but  from  conviction. 
He  hedges  around  his  many  marriages  with  a  sterner  legislation  than  that 
with  which  we  protect  our  one.  He  marries  repeatedly,  because  every 
time  he  is  adding  to  his  importance,  elevating  his  position  in  the  hie- 
rarchy of  heaven ;  because  every  father  has  in  the  kingdom  of  God  a 
principality  proportionate  to  his  number  of  children.  There  cannot  be 
imagined  any  country  less  favorable  for  the  residence  of  a  voluptuary 
than  Utah.  There  is  no  such  thing  possible  as  promiscuous  passion  in 
Salt  Lake  City.  Not  only  are  the  statutes  severer  against  such  practices, 
but  the  feeling  of  the  people  is  more  opposed  to  them  than  in  any  place 
on  the  globe.  The  man  who  wishes  many  objects  of  his  attachment, 
must  marry  them  all,  and  burden  himself  with  a  responsibility  at  each 


564  APPENDIX. 

successive  marriage  for  which  even  the  most  frantic  sensualist  could  find 
no  compensation.  Moreover,  a  great  mistake  is  frequently  made  at  the 
East,  in  supposing  that  the  "  spiritual  marriages,"  so  often  heard  of  in 
connection  with  the  Mormons,  correspond  to  those  promiscuous  and  illicit 
relations  gilded  by  Free  Love  with  that  once  sacred  name,  and  are  merely 
an  extension  of  the  sensual  area  of  the  persons  contracting  them,  with- 
out the  necessity  of  his  assuming  any  of  the  burdens  of  the  husband. 
How  impossible  it  is  that  this  should  be,  may  be  perceived  by  putting 
together  the  facts  that  on  the  one  hand  all  such  relations  outside  the 
marriage  tie  are  severely  punished  ;  and  when  the  transgressor  not  only 
violates  social  order  in  general,  but  trespasses  on  the  close  of  some 
other  man,  that  punishment  takes  the  horrible  form  which  (some  of)  my 
readers  have  read  in  the  history  of  the  Polypeiths  ;  and  that  on  the  other, 
a  great  many  women  in  Utah  are  the  physical  and  temporal  wives  of  one 
man,  the  spiritual  and  eternal  wives  of  another.  The  spiritual  mar- 
riage is  a  ceremony  of  great  intended  solemnity,  purporting  to  seal  a 
woman  to  be  the  wife  of  a  man  after  this  life,  —  a  contract  and  covenant 
ratified  by  the  Church,  and  capable  of  being  solemnized  by  Brighain 
Young  alone,  —  that  she  shall  form  part  of  his  celestial  household  and  live 
with  him  in  heaven  forever.  This  involves  no  union  of  any  kind  on 
earth  after  the  marriage  ceremony  is  over. 

Nor  is  the  element  of  strength  in  Mormonism  any  liberty  of  any  kind, 
granted  to  the  people  of  Utah,  but  not  granted  to  other  people  elsewhere. 
The  very  reverse  is  true.  The  power  resides  in  the  hands  of  an  exceed- 
ing few  —  really,  and  finally,  I  ought  to  say,  in  but  one  hand.  The  people, 
elsewhere  in  this  country  the  sovereign  people,  are  here  the  veriest  creat- 
ures of  despotism.  They  are  no  more  a  power  than  were  the  Venetians 
under  Francis  Joseph ;  but  they  are  ready  to  die  in  defense  of  the  chain 
that  binds  them. 

The  strength  of  Mormonism  is  this,  —  Mormonism  is  a  one-man  power. 
Mormonism  is  Brigham  Young.  The  people  are  generally  collected 
from  the  lowest,  the  most  credulous,  the  unthinking  stratum  of  Europe. 
And  Brigham  Young  is  one  of  the  most  remarkable  men  of  any  age,  of 
any  country.  Next  to  Louis  Napoleon  he  possesses  the  vastest  executive 
ability,  the  highest  talent  for  government,  which  this  century  has  seen  ; 
and  when  I  consider  the  disadvantages  under  which  he  has  labored,  his 
lack  of  a  great  name,  like  the  elder  Bonaparte's,  behind  him  to  give  his 
very  mistakes  prjestige ;  his  deficiency  in  education  beyond  the  meagre 
help  which  he  might  receive  from  a  common  school  in  the  early  settle- 
ment of  Western  New  York ;  his  being  obliged  to  associate  all  his  life 
with  the  gross,  the  ignorant,  and  the  superstitious,  —  I  do  not  know  why  I 
should  make  a  reservation,  when  I  speak  of  him  superlatively,  in  the 
French  Emperor's  favor.  Perhaps  the  best  expression  for  the  difference 
between  the  two  would  be  to  say,  that  he  is  Louis  Napoleon  plus  a  heart 
and  intense  moral  convictions.  There  are  some  circumstances  under 


APPENDIX.  565 

which  the  addition  must  be  a  despotic  ruler's  weakness  ;  but  then  again 
there  are  other  cases  —  and  in  Utah,  among  that  wild,  fiercely  mobile  na- 
tion of  fanatics,  these  are  not  few  —  where  it  is  a  positive  advantage. 

Brigham  Young's  power  with  the  Mormons  is  a  cause  of  inexpressible 
astonishment  to  every  thinking  mind  which  visits  Utah.  They  do  not 
seem  to  know  it ;  he  works  their  hundred  and  twenty  thousand  wires 
(for  that  is  probably  not  far  from  the  right  number  of  his  subjects),  sit- 
ting at  his  table  in  his  plain  little  office,  as  a  telegraph  operator  works 
a  single  line  with  a  single  key.  He  has  acquired  absolute  ascendency 
over  them.  His  power  is  the  most  despotic  known  to  mankind.  The 
Mormons  would  think  of  disputing  a  law  of  nature  as  soon  as  his  will ; 
and  that,  probably  because  he  works  like  nature,  without  any  apparent 
selfishness,  without  anger,  but  inevitably,  and  with  an  almost  invariable 
result  of  success  and  general  beneficence.  The  people  amuse  themselves 
with  the  fiction  that  they,  like  us  Gentiles  at  the  East,  have  a  voice  in 
things  ;  that  their  votes  elect  their  officers  ;  that  they  are  a  represen- 
tative government.  But  Brigham  always  knows  who  is  going  to 
Congress.  I  asked  him  if  Dr.  Bernhisel  would  be  likely  to  get  into 
Congress  again.  "  No,"  he  replied  with  perfect  certainty,  "  we  shall  send 
Colonel  Hooper  as  our  delegate."  When  the  time  came  Brigham  would 
send  in  his  name  to  the  "  Deseret  News,"  whose  office,  like  everything  else 
valuable  and  powerful,  is  in  his  inclosure.  It  would  be  printed,  of 
course,  —  a  counter-nomination  is  a  thing  unheard  of  among  the  Mor- 
mons, and  the  Gentile  residents  have  not  the  slightest  show  for  a  candidate 
of  their  own,  —  and  on  election  day,  the  man  Brigham  named  would  be 
delegate  as  sure  as  the  sun  rose.  Here  is  the  crack  in  which  the  lever 
must  be  inserted  when  Mormonisrn  rushes  to  its  suicide  by  challenging 
collision  with  the  United  States  authority.  Here  may  it  be  pried  off  its 
base,  for  no  administration  can  be  caitiff  enough  to  hold  that  a  congress- 
man or  delegate  elected  in  this  fashion  belongs  to  that  Republican  form 
of  government  which  the  Constitution  guarantees  to  all  the  States. 

All  Mormondom  is  Brigham's.  As  the  irresponsible  trustee  and  treas- 
urer of  the  Church,  its  first  officer  in  all  things,  secular  and  religious, 
he  possesses  absolute  control  of  all  the  property  of  the  Church,  —  and  we 
have  seen  how  vast  that  property  is,  —  including  the  tithe  of  every  man's 
private  property,  as  a  matter  of  course,  and  regular  ;  the  right  at  will  to 
sequestrate  any  further  proportion  of  such  property  for  Church  purposes ; 
the  gigantic  Building  Fund,  for  a  temple  and  any  other  edifices  he  may 
choose  to.  erect,  of  whose  plan,  specifications,  and  disbursements  he  is 
sole  arbiter ;  the  Emigration  Fund,  still  vaster,  from  which  are  made  the 
advances  necessary  to  bring  poor  proselytes  from  all  the  regions  of 
Europe  visited  by  Mormon  missionaries,  and  into  which  those  proselytes 
after  their  settlement  in  Utah  are  compelled  to  pay  back  that  advance,  by 
instalments,  to  the  uttermost  farthing  of  principal  and  interest,  in  addition 
to  their  tithes.  One's  mind  becomes  staggered  at  the  immensity  of  the 
financial  interests  which  this  single  man  wields  unquestioned.  His 


566  APPENDIX. 

supreme  relation  to  both  the  secular  and  religious  governments  of  Mor* 
monism  and  the  unreporting  character  of  such  a  relation,  makes  it 
impossible  for  any  outsider  to  draw  the  line  between  his  private  posses- 
sions and  those  of  the  Church ;  but  he  is  for  all  practical  purposes  the 
owner  of  all  the  Church  has.  I  heard  many  estimates  of  the  amount  of 
his  personal  fortune  among  those  (which  to  be  sure  is  not  saying  a  great 
deal)  who  had  as  good  opportunities  as  anybody  else,  and  all  of  them 
made  him  by  far  the  wealthiest  man  in  America  ;  one,  indeed,  of  the 
wealthiest  men  in  the  world.  Since  he  has  been  in  Utah,  a  single  New 
York  house  is  stated  upon  competent  authority  to  have  invested  sixty 
millions  of  dollars  for  him  in  foreign  securities.1  The  Gentiles  regard  this 
as  an  evidence  of  his  sagacious  anticipation  that  the  whole  Mormon 
fabric,  so  far  as  America  is  concerned,  is  destined  to  tumble  in  his  time ; 
and  that  his  practice  of  the  principle  "  L'eglise  c'est  moi "  is  not  meant 
to  extend  to  identification  with  his  sect's  downfall.  But  among  all  the 
eyes  watching  him,  none  have  ever  accused  him  of  peculation  or  dis- 
honesty of  any  kind  in  his  office,  if  we  disregard,  as  we  ought,  the 
mere  baseless  and  proofless  innuendoes  of  his  avowed  personal  enemies. 

The  mountain-stream  that  irrigates  the  city,  flowing  to  all  its  fields 
and  gardens,  through  open  ditches  on  each  side  of  the  highway,  passes 
through  Brigham's  inclosure ;  if  the  Saints  needed  drought  to  humble  them, 
he  could  back  the  waters  to  their  source.  The  road  to  the  only  canon 
where  firewood  is  easily  attainable,  runs  through  the  same  close,  and 
is  barred  by  a  gate  of  which  he  has  the  sole  key.  A  family-man  wishing 
to  cut  fuel,  must  ask  his  leave,  which  is  generally  granted  on  condition 
that  every  third  or  fourth  load  be  deposited  in  the  inclosure  for  Church 
purposes.  Thus  everything  vital,  save  the  air  he  breathes,  reaches  the 
Mormon  only  through  Brigham's  sieve.  What  more  absolute  despotism 
is  conceivable  ?  Here,  again,  is  the  pou-sto  for  Government  interference. 
The  mere  fact  of  such  power  resting  in  one  man's  irresponsible  hands,  is 
a  crime  against  the  Constitution.  At  the  same  time,  wonderful  as  it 
may  seem,  this  power  is  controlled  for  the  common  good.  His  life  is  all 
one  great  theoretical  mistake,  yet  he  makes  fewer  practical  mistakes  than 
any  other  man,  so  situated,  whom  the  world  ever  saw.  Those  he  does 
make  are  not  on  the  side  of  self.  He  merges  his  whole  personality  in  the 
Church  with  a  self-abnegation  which  would  establish  in  business  a  whole 
century  of  martyrs  having  a  better  cause. 

The  people  believe  in  him  because  he  believes  in  himself.  He  can 
slay  them  when  they  apostatize :  they  only  quote  Joshua  and  Achan, 
Moses  and  Korah,  or  some  other  bloody  theocratic  analogue.  He  may 
be  privy  to  the  Mountain  Meadow  affair :  Samuel  hewed  Agag  in  pieces. 
He  has  in  his  Lion  and  Bee  houses,  in  the  Prophet's  inclosure  (called 
after  the  sculptured  symbols  which  they  bear  on  their  central  pedi- 
ments), and  in  other  dwellings,  over  seventy  wives  after  the  flesh  ;  while 

1  His  British  possessions  alone  make  him  to-day  (1870)  the  third  largest  depositor 
in  the  Bank  of  England. 


APPENDIX.  567 

it  is  so  much  the  fashion  to  marry  him  spiritually,  that  he  himself  has  no 
idea  of  the  number  of  those  who  will  share  his  menage  in  heaven,  — 
many  married  on  earth  to  other  husbands  having  gone  away  from  his 
office  just  after  the  ceremony,  never  to  speak  to  him  again  until  the  resur- 
rection. It  is  amusing  to  think  how  perpetually  the  usher  at  the  door  of 
his  celestial  saloon  will  be  occupied  for  the  first  few  years  succeeding  the 
Prophet's  translation  to  bliss  in  the  announcement  of  fresh  "  Mrs.  Brig- 
hams."  The  last  time  anybody  took  the  trouble  to  count  the  register, 
the  number  of  these  spiritual  wives  of  his  had  run  up  to  something  like 
5,000.  But  with  all  these,  and  more  especially  the  70-75  earthly  ones, 
no  one  thinks  of  calling  him  a  sensualist.  He  believes  in  himself  and  his 
doctrine,  so  the  people  believe  in  both.  He  is  the  best  and  most  en- 
lightened helper  of  all  his  people's  industries ;  he  knows  so  well  the 
worth  of  labor  to  the  dignifying  of  the  man,  that  a  few  years  ago,  when 
many  of  the  poor  people  after  a  bad  season  came  to  him  almost  starving, 
to  ask  the  help  of  the  Church  funds,  he  set  them  building  a  clay  wall 
around  the  city  to  keep  out  hypothetical  Indians,  that  they  might  feel 
they  earned  the  aid  afforded,  and  not  learn  to  eat  the  bread  of  idleness. 
What  I  have  before  stated  of  his  ingenuity  in  extemporizing  a  home- 
made gilt  chandelier  for  his  opera-house,  is  true  in  every  department  of 
business.  He  has  made  himself  familiar  with  all  the  resources  of  Utah, 
and  studies  night  and  day  to  make  them  avail  to  the  utmost.  He  has 
established  in  the  more  southern  part  of  Utah  the  cane,  cotton,  and 
indigo  culture  ;  and  I  had  the  pleasure  of  seeing  a  beautiful  silk  scarf, 
which  would  not  have  done  discredit  to  the  Chinese  looms,  sent  him  as 
the  first  fruits  of  that  valuable  branch  of  industry  which  he  had  estab- 
lished near  Nephi  ;  distributing  the  cocoons  and  treatises  on  rearing  the 
worms,  together  with  plans  for  wheels  and  looms,  among  the  people  in  the 
neighborhood  when  he  went  there  on  a  preaching  tour.  But  all  these 
excellences  of  executive  ability,  this  boundless  versatility  and  activity  of 
mind,  do  not  produce  one  tithe  the  confidence  in  him  which  is  awakened 
by  the  universal  belief  in  his  sincerity  of  nature.  He  believes  so 
strongly  in  Mormonism  and  Brigham  Young,  that  he  is  the  magnet  by 
which  Joe  Smith  has  suspended  six-score  thousand  souls. 

Perhaps  the  Mormon  question  will  ultimately  settle  itself  without  a 
collision  between  Utah  and  the  Government.  If  Brigham  Young  dies, 
it  will  be  settled  speedily.  He  is  the  key-stone  of  the  arch  of  Mormon 
society.  While  he  remains,  these  increasing  thousands  of  the  most  het- 
erogeneous souls  that  could  be  swept  together  from  the  by-ways  of  Chris- 
tendom will  continue  to  be  builded  up  into  a  coherent  nationality.  The 
instant  he  crumbles,  Mormondom  and  Mormonism  will  fall  to  pieces  at 
once,  irreparably.  His  individual  magnetism,  his  executive  tact,  his 
native  benevolence,  are  all  immense  ;  but  these  advantages  would  avail 
him  little  with  the  dead-in-earnest  fanatics  who  rule  Utah  under  him, 
and  the  entirely  persuaded  fanatics  whom  they  rule,  were  not  his  quali- 


568  APPENDIX. 

ties  all  coordinated  in  this  one  absolute  sincerity  of  belief  and  motive. 
Brigham  Young  is  the  farthest  remove  on  earth  from  a  hypocrite  ;  he  is 
that  grand,  yet  awful  sight  in  human  nature,  —  a  man  who  has  brought  the 
loftiest  Christian  self-devotion  to  the  altar  of  the  Devil,  who  is  ready 
to  suffer  crucifixion  for  Barabbas,  supposing  him  Christ.  Be  sure 
that  were  he  a  hypocrite,  the  Union  would  have  nothing  to  fear  from 
Utah.  When  he  dies,  at  least  four  hostile  factions,  which  now  find  their 
only  common  ground  in  deification  of  his  person,  will  snatch  his  mantle 
at  opposite  corners.  Then  will  come  such  a  rending  as  the  world  has  not 
seen  since  the  Macedonian  generals  fought  over  the  coffin  of  Alexander  ; 
and  then  Mormonism  will  go  out  of  geography  into  the  history  of  popular 
delusions.  There  is  not  a  single  chief,  apostle,  bishop,  or  elder,  except 
Brigham,  who  possesses  any  catholicity  of  influence.  I  found  this  tacitly 
acknowledged  in  every  quarter.  The  more  enlightened,  fore-looking  of 
the  people  seem  like  citizens  of  a  beleaguered  town,  who  know  they  have 
but  a  definite  amount  of  bread,  yet  have  made  up  their  minds  to  act  while 
it  lasts,  as  if  there  were  no  such  thing  as  starvation.  The  greatest  com- 
fort you  can  afford  a  Mormon  is  to  tell  him  how  young  Brigham  looks  ; 
for  the  quick  unconscious  sequence  is,  "  Then  Brigham  may  last  out  my 
time,  —  apres  moi  la  deluge  !  "  Those  who  think  at  all  deeply,  have  no 
conjecture  of  any  Mormon  future  beyond  him,  and  I  know  that  many 
Mormons  (Heber  Kimball  included)  would  gladly  die  to-day  rather  than 
survive  him,  and  encounter  that  judgment-day  and  final  perdition  of  their 
faith  which  must  dawn  on  his  new-made  grave. 


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